They tried to change a hardcore based game into a mainstream casual game... thus causing over half the playerbase to quit.

I disagree with cichy though, changing earlier would of done nothing except make half the playerbase quit... the other they would of continued to play WoW, Aion, and the other mainstream games.

The ones playing XI where the ones who choose not to play WoW, infact alot of people left WoW and came to FFXI when they found out they did not like that style.

Mainstream and FFXI are not the same group of target audience.