Hiring and Firing isn't the issue though SE is the 9th largest game company in the world. I think that if they needed to hire more programmers it wouldn't bother them, certainly not to the extent of having to fire ppl to pay the salary. I think it's more about a disconnect or a stubborn mentality on SE's part. They are not really concerned about FFXI anymore, yes it makes them money but they have tons n tons of other sources for money. If they wanted to I would wager they could put a team the same size as 14s or bigger without a sweat but they won't because the coding is old, they're too involved in other projects, and XI is riddled with so many problems that they are content to do mini version updates all the way until the game dies. So in the meantime at least they can give us a better looking game since it's obvious 80% of the changes the player base asks for aren't gonna get done.