Honestly.....as always, Yoshi disregards the "inexperienced player" argument as minor, which it is not. He claims to be a gamer, he should know better than that unless all he truly enjoys are single player games.

That being said, I am more and more sure FFXIV is preparing to F2P eventually. Just instead of jumping the gun they are slowly, they are easing the community into it. Don't bring the "WoW never went F2P" argument, this is not WoW (or not completely) and we do NOT have the same amount of players, as much as people want to believe it. I did not play WoW and I will never be so desperate to try it but afaik it is not aimed at people to "take a break between patches", which is clearly the option Yoshi is pushing.

It won't be anything fast, I doubt it will happen before 2018 or even later, they will milk the sub + shop as long as possible first.

In either, case, I am severely disappointed. This problem wouldn't exist if they would have prepared for this in the initial design of the game. Despite what people think, changing the design of a game retroactively is not an easy task and requires a lot of resources and re-balancing of pretty much dead content (if it wasn't dead already, they are essentially killing it with this). As a game designer, I would be very bummed to see my work abandoned like this but that's just me. Yoshi said before he had a 10-years plan for the game, he should have foreseen this issue when 2.0 was made. The game's design has essentially caused it to get trapped. And yes, this IS the easy (and most cash-grabby) way out, while not easy, there would have been different ways.

I won't make a huge "if this happens, I will quit" statement simply because Yoshi and SE won't give a shit about a few old players quitting, the potions will make up the lost money. No matter how Yoshi puts it, up to 29% of the community purchasing the potion is a HUGE jump in revenue, that's 1/3 of the community! Multiply that by 20-30€ per player and you have your math why we will definitely get these potions. It's not an if anymore, it's a when.

Unfortunately, a large part of the players that will purchase these potions will think they know it all and here comes the level 60 Paladin/Warrior that doesn't know he is a tank....