The FFXIV devs (and SE in general) are not my friends. They don't know me and they don't really care about me (and this goes doubly since I'm in NA and not JP).

They are a vendor and I am a customer. The only thing they care about is my money, otherwise they wouldn't vaporize my house if I choose to do what the developer says we should all do, and "take a break" for a while. Clearly, he meant "take a break from playing, but keep paying us". Which is what I have to do in order to keep something I earned in-game and spent countless hours and millions of gil on.

If there wasn't a constant threat of punishing me for taking a break, I would maybe be more sympathetic, but there is, so I'm not.