Why in god's green Earth do dungeons have a timer?

[Naunet]

1. Those other MMO's might not have the traffic/popularity as FFXIV, so they don't need a timer since there is plenty room in their server. Forecast probably shows that traffic won't change in the foreseeable future.
2. Those other MMO's HAD PLENTY OF TIME to adapt to the traffic. For example WoW, were you there at launch? And even a couple of years in, there were queues in the log-in screen. And timers weren't a problem then since the ease of "duty finder, dungeon finder" wasn't implemented yet.

I would hope that SE is not repeating the same mistakes regarding server infrastructure that other MMOs made ten years ago (same goes for other aspects of game design). An industry is supposed to learn and grow. We should not have to retread the same learning period every single time a new MMO releases. (WoW, incidentally, does not have dungeon timers, and the only times I have ever received the "instance servers full" message were during the release of ToC following Ulduar, at the peak of the game's popularity, and a couple times in Cata with the release of a new dungeon. This message disappeared pretty much after a day or two each time.)

@Tiggy below me: Nothing is stopping you from leaving a group if you decide it's too bad to continue. You are never trapped in a dungeon, with or without a timer.

I'm a little misinformed here. Can you direct me to any source stating that games have had severe issues with dungeon timers that it was immensely game breaking?

A problem does not have to be "game breaking" to be a problem. What ever happened to consumers demanding improvements of the products they purchase? We should not allow MMOs the luxury of re-inventing the wheel every time a new one releases. Hundreds of MMOs have come before FFXIV; that's hundreds of opportunities to learn better system design.

[illuminapanic]

Cut

I'm a little misinformed here. Can you direct me to any source stating that games have had severe issues with dungeon timers that it was immensely game breaking?