Huh, I changed from German to Englisch way back when I started ARR because I didn't like it. It had nothing ... fantasy to it, IMO.
A successful product in a sector where reputation is everything, is not defined by "Some people liked it", it is defined by "Everybody liked it". So no, for the purpose of feedback and media coverage, the opinion of people that liked it does not matter as much as those who hated it, because we are not talking about a sampling of an unbiased population, we are talking about a sampling from the people that paid for and play FFXIV, so these would all be people that already used to like the game as a baseline. If your new expansion is panned by half the player base and liked by the other half, then you didn't score neutral, you just turned half of people that liked your game into people who no longer like your game. That is a huge loss. While the people that still liked it are not suddenly going to buy it twice to show their appreciation or anything, so you make no extra gains on the half that is being positive.