Letter from the Producer LXII

[PharisHanasaki]

Then there's this line: "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers". That's a blatant lie. A large number of items share models, and an even larger amount are racially universal, like accessories and weapons.

Let me explain it to you. The fact that an item can be worn on multiple races, does not mean it is or can be the same item. For each race, each item has to be appropiately set so that it looks good, we have 6 races, so each item has at least 12 different files (one for female, one for male) . Earrings are not in the same spot, whether your a miqote, lala, au ra, roe, etc. Cuz every race has a different shape. So even if say, some items do not need any changes for the new races (which I doubt, given that their heads are completely different, and hrothgars body shape is somewhat different too) you still have to go ahead an review each to make sure it's acceptable.

It is not a lie.
And if you're asking yourself, why is it harder now than back then? Back then was 2 expansions ago, how many more items, jobs, and emotes, have been added since then? Many. They have to review all items made up to this day, plus new ones, which is a very time consuming task.