Naoki Yoshida's Comment in Regard to Jump Potions/Boost Potions

[Velhart]

That's kind of the point. Dev time was sacrificed for that revamp. It was to illustrate that it didn't come cheap and it affected the overall perception of the expansion.
The 'blowing up' was fun until the novelty wore off and you had to swear at the chasm in the barrens or swim through 1k needles. People didn't stick with that expansion as they did prior.
While i agree that 1.0 is similar to Cataclysm, the idea here is that cataclysm was an interim expansion, intended to continue the game, not reset it. Intent, perception and re-evaluation do play a role here.

The difference is the budget and team for WoW is much bigger than FFXIV's. They can afford the expenses and time to do this. Any real mistakes were more mismanaged decisions in how content should be done.