Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Felessan]

I followed FFXIV dev since the start, and well it could have been 5 years in development so what? As I already stated there's nowhere that says how long any development should be, it probably needed closer to 7 years, and we'd have a fantastic game, or at least a polished game that did something different to the other myriad of MMOs in the market.

Yoshida made a game that 2 millions plays in 2 years, while Tanaka didn't make it in 5 years and upper limit for his creation still would be around half a million.
Yes, oldschool FF11 lovers would like it and probably consider it an amazing game (like people loves EVE even though its really a relatively small niche mmo), but it still would be a niche game and a failure for SE, given how much resources they poured in in FF14.

but the constraints of the publishing date probably forced the copy pasted environments, oh, and I LOVED the old shroud, I'd give anything to have it back (but I understand why the majority of people hated it with passion).

Constraint was obviously money. Zones were bloated and it was not really needed, you just can cut zones in half - and loose nothing but those "20 mins to run through zone" moments. And to create huge landscapes - you either copy-paste or require a lot of money as artists work ain't free.