Newest interview (abyssea was a mistake?)

[Runespider]

In short, Abyssea removed a large chunk of the hardcore players from FFXI. However, those players were the ones who were able to deal with real content better, which is why now everyone complains about Voidwatch. It's very hard to go back to "normal" FFXI, after Abyssea, which was FFXI on ecstasy. And I'm not sure if people will ever be able to recover.

If you took the hardcore element (which has vastly decreased since most of them kinda went and got jobs/kids after leaving college etc) and weighed them next to the casuals the hardcore would fly off into space, they make up such a small amount of the playerbase they make they are almost unimportant. Also very few hardcore left till the last year when Aby content dried up and there was little else left to do, they were all in Aby grinding..if more content would of been forthcoming they would still be here.

During the launch of FFXIV, Tanaka was just as dedicated and involved in FFXI as ever

It's written down, so it must be true. Do you believe everything spoon fed down your throat cause someone somewhere wrote it down?

In short, Abyssea removed a large chunk of the hardcore players from FFXI. However, those players were the ones who were able to deal with real content better, which is why now everyone complains about Voidwatch.

VW isn't amazingly hard, JP and English speaking PUGs taking them all down daily. People complain about a drop system custom made to make people do the content for years, not how hard the fights are.