Having the only losses of consequences apply to the antagonists or minor characters who show up only to die a few seconds or minutes later has been a common complaint ever since the days of ARR and HW came to a close. Back then, there was a healthy balance between victories and losses for both the protagonists and antagonists alike.

WoW also proves that extensive use of phasing technology can be used to change and update the game world to reflect player progress and that's a much older game. It may have gone overboard at times with too much death and destruction at times but it's not like FFXIV needs to follow such a path to the same extent.

Besides, as the development team is all tooe ager to tell us they wish for FFXIV to be similar to a single player game on many fronts - at least where the MSQ's are concerned.