Naoki Yoshida recent interview

[Fendred]

I hope Yoshi is wrong about MMORPGs being in decline in future. I don't really think I will ever be focused on other genre than MMOs and some social games never were my cup of tea.
Problem with MMOs is, that there are thousands of them but only about 5 of them are good. If developers made good MMOs built on player feedback, they wouldn't have to worry that their game would be a fail. FFXIV used a lot of feedback I believe and the game is going strong and well. They just need to react better to what their players really hate and suggest and I believe the game will be here for next 10 years.

They answered some of our suggestions really well with Heavensward but also made some dumb mistakes, lets hope they can fix it in future and do even better with 4.0.

EDIT: For example battlecraft and fieldcraft leves are kinda broken in HW, redscrips aren't really working that well too, there is too high ilvl progression and gear gets thrown away in 1 week etc..

They are in decline due to clueless developers like Yoshida. They've been harping the death of MMORPGs long before Yoshida ever showed up and they aren't dead. The current reality is that we have hundreds of thousands of players wanting some game they can enjoy but are forced to play WoW-MMO after WoW-MMO. These devs have been killing the market for years. Yoshida is working for a company that only knows how to make single player games or games with optional multiplayer. I mean, he was surprised that hunts, something implemented due to player request, "even worked." He doesn't have a clue how to make a long lasting MMORPG.