Trying to understand the negative posts I keep seeing about the Dev Team

[Shurrikhan]

and why Tanaka was asked to step down after 1.0

I mean, it's hard to say that Tanaka was asked to resign for not securing sufficient funds, or reasonably imply that Yoshida replaced him for being more demanding, when Tanaka was replaced after repeatedly taking up issues of staff size, funding, and the forced rushed release, with Yoshida then entering with no such immediate deadlines, greatly increased funding, and an enlarged staff....

Tanaka failed; sure. But, it wasn't any accomplishment of Yoshida's to have overcome those hurdles as a producer should; they were concessions finally made with his installment.

If you watch noclip's documentary it's very clear there were major flaws in the way Tanaka was handling the team, even if they don't name him. Every team was doing their own thing with very little interaction with each other, and the team only had experience with FFXI, no one seemed interested in actually researching what's the MMO market like for modern MMOs. It was a recipe for failure even if the endless bugs weren't there.

While the original devs were busy spamming for a party to grind in XI WoW had already reshaped the genre and changed what people expect from a MMO.

Again, I'm not saying Tanaka didn't fail to meet the requirements of a project leader, let alone a producer. It was bad. But when a company is finally forced to admit its failings, known and complained of for a year prior, and finally induces the necessary funds, the producer they attach to that injection shouldn't be credited for that injection itself as if s/he'd somehow won the company over to the idea of really funding the game. Company reputation itself pushed that difference -- to the point they could no longer stonewall complaints. And at that point what mattered most at that exact moment about the producer was only that they were not Tanaka.

Perhaps -- even likely -- another producer would have secured funding sooner. Certainly there are other producers who could have made better use of their team, even as limited as it was. But the one person who cannot be credited one way or the other for securing funds is whoever arrived only after or precisely with those funds.

Let's give credit only where it's due, not for changes for which the credited was not in any control.