ITT: People blame a software company for the issues that they experience with hardware.

SE uses a data center. That data center holds their servers. Those servers can and probably do have many network jumps before it gets to your client. You as the client don't care about the hardware involved and just focus on SE that made the software you use. No one sees the problem here?

Yes, the data center could be the root of all evil, but they are in the business of providing servers to clients like SE. So more than likely it's not all the data centers fault either. There are numerous jumps between your client and their server. Any one of those could also impact your experience. I can't count how many times I have had internet issues with Time Warner and they had to research to find out that some hub 5 miles away from me was tampered with and it was impacting everyone's internet in the area. Truthfully it may not actually be the data center or your ISP that are at fault. It could be something else along the network stream.

Your average gamer doesn't want to hear that. They want to take their pitchfork to the monster in their eyes. For the record FFXIV:ARR isn't the only game to have similar issues. There were reports of this very same thing with every other MMO that I can remember. Rift and SW:TOR being the last to that I remember best.