Actually if you remember, they were fine and something on the backend started to mess up.
Previous NMs were never end-game content.
UI worked, but was sluggish due to serverside code being unoptimized for it (as its server side).
Now let's look past FFXIV:
SE released - Final Fantasy 1 - 14 and all in between, Seiken Densetsu 1-5, Romancing SaGa (and variants), VP, Chrono Trigger/Cross/Radical Dreamers, Front Mission series, TWEWY, Kingdom Hearts series and so on.
All successful series, so no SE isn't dumb, shit happens and a rushed release happened with this game.
