Where do they think their casual audience is supposed to come from?

According to their own poll most players are XI players or FF players. All FF games are 30-60hrs of gameplay, not that casual.

XIV requires absolutely state-of the art PC to run at reasonable frame rates. How do these aspects reach an average casual player again?

If I hadn't followed the FF series very closely for the past few years I wouldn't even know XIV exists let alone what kind of game it is.

This is probably just me but I feel like they're trying to reach an audience that just isn't there to benefit from and while doing so they're turning against their old fans who given the state of the game are the only players they have left at this point.

Casual games are usually played on the web-browser or as apps while waiting for a bus. It's not deep enough to hold interest of players for years while paying a monthly fee for that kind of service.

Just like Wii, are people still playing Wii Sports resort after few tries?
What about Monster Hunter 3Tri? A game so hardcore the controls alone take almost 10 pages of the manual and most game features aren't even mentioned because there's so much of them. The European Servers alone are full of players especially considering how niche title that is usually thought to be.