If I had a dollar for everyone who has ever said, "FFXIV is going to die if blah blah blah doesn't change..."

Yes, the population always declines at the end of patch cycles, and it also declined toward the end of 2.x. But whenever the big patch hits, or the expansion hits, everyone comes back. And I bet a lot of those people don't even cancel their subs... they're just playing other games while waiting for the new content.

I've never seen any interview or data saying the game has fewer than 500k active subs, btw. And on Hyperion, I see no visual evidence that would lead me to think anything is in decline.

The game is going to be fine. It has its audience, and the development team is continuing to spice things up. We have years and years to look forward to.