After reading through a lot of this, I still fail to see how this is a bad thing? It took the Final Fantasy XI "world", and completely rehabbed it. Learning from other, popular, MMOs that have come out since and iterating on the things that made it FF in the first place.

Many of us, honestly, hated the forced group content and grind of FFXI. It's actually why I quit the game, it was impossible to solo anything after 20 and tagging around with a group for my entire playtime? No thanks.

A lot of us have grown up and out of the hardcore MMO genre. We don't have the time to invest in all day group content, raiding, or anything else. Making games "casual friendly"/"accessible"/etc is logical for any company and it's why WoW is still the 800lb gorilla and one of the last MMOs that can justify a monthly service fee (this being one of the others).

(to be continued.. out of space)