It might ruin the population a little, the problem is usually if a game went down the development team could still work on it, sadly that isnt the case here, its a complete stand-still for everything.

I will probably not come back on until the next major patch but that is due to the game itself and not my time away, but i was already not coming on prior to this event.

Many of my friends do not care currently the state of the game and only considering coming back when the game has been solved. (September onwards).

Sadly though I stopped playing XIV as much because I started up again on XI and now i cant even do that haha so I think I will spend my time getting a lot of work and things out the way during this downtime.