The game needs to have a mixture of content but one problem that always comes with open world content of "whoever hits it first claims it" is eventually it leads to 3rd party bot tool claims.

Someone will make a bot that automatically provokes it the second its in memory, before players even realize its spawned.
It was a major problem in FFXI, especially when NASA came out and linkshells had network-claim bots that had staggered times where they all tried to claim, adjusted for latency, like .10 seconds apart. Xatsh and Paradox were huge on this in FFXI and it really allowed them to monopolize the endgame content because legit players, who normally had say a 1/10 chance of claim, turned to a 1/100 chance of claim - plus they still had to fight the mob, and deal with pathetic drop rates.

I do like the open world mobs but that's an issue that's inevitable, and solved with instanced raids and force pops. Force Pops are actually one of the easiest methods to deal with raids, farm a pop item and pop the NM and botting isn't involved.

The system now seems to work where the open world raid mobs drop tradeable loot, and the raids drop exclusive loot (proving you actually accomplished something instead of buying it).

Question to the OP but if you don't want a game that's all raids then wtf do you want people to do at max level? Walk around and /pose everywhere? Continue to grind mobs for merits? Love it or hate it but Abyssea in FFXI gave you near endless content for 3 to 18 people to work on. FFXI also had a great balance with Assaults and Salvage and Nyzul Isle, where you had a progression of instances working towards an ultimate goal. Unfortunately they butchered it by making them all dailys and even making them all based off the same timer... (Nyzul and Assault shared the same timer, and assaults were required to do Salvage).

So... no I won't quit, but I want MORE than raids of course. Some PVP would be nice, more missions, quests, and ways to progress to set yourself apart from others. The storyline missions giving access to exclusive areas, like Sea or Sky, and the end rewards set you apart from average casual players with more than "raid until you have access" (WoW and EQ1 style).

FFXIV, like FFXI, is going to be a game for all players. It will have content for the raiders, for the questers, for the rmt, for the botters, for the event-lovers, and the social players, casual players, etc. You'd be an idiot to cater to one crowd, especially the endgame crowd (because they make up the smallest portion of the population), yet if you ignore them you're game becomes stale and meaningless. It will have a balance, no more threads like this please.