Just speculation but maybe they couldnt put a AFK system in place due to Playstation users? Other MMOs are not cross platform like this one so there are going to be tons of server/connection issues. Its the whole reason why other successful companies haven't done it there are tons of input problems. Take blizzard and D3 for example, they made the game for comps with the idea in the future for consoles. But they would need another few years to make it cross platform capable.

As it stands ff14 seems as a game when you can actually play very polished and good. But they seemed to have skimped out on the server connections. Either someone underestimated how popular this game would be or simply didn't do there job.