R: Before 2.0, you described this system where beast tribes would summon Primals in the open world and you’d be able to fight them outside instanced battles and Free Companies could go fight them. Has this idea been completely discarded or is it still in plans in some form?
Y: It is planned as content, and it's still a thing. But it’s a matter of when it would be a perfect fit to have that content released. If the community becomes very tight-knit and sort of like closed almost, kind of like on auto-pilot. If and when that happens is when I feel it’s appropriate to release this kind of content; I'm envisioning a guild versus guild type of scenario. I feel that releasing the content is still way too early at this point, had it not been for so many players being on FF14 yes that’s still kind of the reason we’re needing to monitor the situation. At the time of 2.0 development, we didn’t expect so many people joining the community.
This is a statement that bugs me the most. The problem isn't the community but rather the game design. The entire game can be played from town with random people from other servers. You group up with them, say hi and bye, and never see them again so you never have a chance to "befriend" them. Studies show the people you are most likely to be friends with are school and work associates. This is because these are the people you see on a daily bases and have communication with. Reason older MMORPG had tight-knit community is because it was closed world and you kept seeing the same people over and over. You would group up and eventual form guilds.

Now I'm not saying DF queue is a bad thing but you need a healthy mix of Open World and Open Data Center content. We still can't even form alliances in open world for FATE and Hunts, seriously come on SE. I'm also not saying we need FFXI's HNM battles either but need open world group content. You can even add a World based Duty Finder to make it easier be matched up with people.