I'm gonna say something unpopular: I don't like to rush.

[phantomr23]

Which is silly because in order for a game to be considered ‘profitable’ (unless you invest a level of equity like SWTOR or Star Citizen) you only need a solid 300k subscribers. But those numbers don’t compare to the ‘WoW phenom’ which is considered the standard these days instead of the fluke it was.

To be fair, in the case of FFXIV specifically I suspect Square Enix has a very high standard given the value they place upon the Final Fantasy brand. I don't have any evidence of this but I suspect the higher-ups at the very least expect the game to be in roughly the same ballpark as WoW subscriber wise, or perhaps just in line with the closest competition in Japan.