Wine Please!

[Feronar]

They will never implement such a feature in the game because it would result in a major reclassification of the game in many countries who have censorship restrictions on media depicting consumption of alcohol - FFXIV's current classification in most countries is the equivelant of 'mid teens' and such an inclusion would result in it requiring a more adult classification, something SE would not want as it means losing a major share of it's player base. This is the same reason the player cannot smoke despite there being an ashtray furnishing for houses.

They can get away with depicting NPCs drinking alcohol or producing it, but the moment they make it gameplay that changes the as it's 'interactive' and thus 'encourages alcoholism', and requires a tougher more restrictive classification (I don't agree with such censorship, but that's how many countries' governments have responded and their attitude towards it, if you're unhappy with it contact your local government representative and try and get them to change it).

I doubt it would have that much impact on the rating. WoW allows player characters to consume alcohol, and doing so causes the screen to blur and wobble and the player character to veer left and right and be unable to move in a straight line, and causes enemies to appear lower level than they actually are, and it's still rated T. Getting drunk in WoW also causes messages to appear in the chat log such as "You feel tipsy", "You feel drunk", and "You feel completely smashed".

That said, the resources it would take Square Enix to do its due diligence (I.e. checking with the ratings boards of all the countries they operate in) before implementing that might not be worth the effort.