There has not been a single major patch without a critical issue since Endwalker.

[Jeeqbit]

If I messed up like they did I'd be out of a job real quick.

No, you would not. The issue is congestion. This happens to many companies when launching a new website. Governments, Facebook and even Google has had it before. If the employer understands anything about how servers and networks function, they would not fire them just because there was a lot of interest on the first day. It's unlikely there will be that much interest all at once ever again. SE knows that and I doubt they would fire anyone over it.

More to the point, why is the relationship between us and the devs presented as a personal one when it's actually a business arrangement? There arent supposed to be emotional responses from the businesses side, that's just plain unprofessional.

MMOs are different. You can't run it purely like a business. Since you are quoting the presentation on MMO design, it also mentioned that you have to run an MMO like a government rather than like a business.

The most successful companies create an emotional relationship with their customers with conventions. You have Apple conventions, Star Trek (or other TV show) conventions, games conventions and they exist for MMOs as well. With an open place where the key people meet their "customers" in person, it becomes a two-way relationship and if everyone at the convention is throwing tomatoes and booing whatever they do, they would probably want to quit.

All I know is that it isnt our responsibility to cater our responses for the sake of someones emotions we're never gonna meet.

People do meet them at fanfests so not everyone can say that they will never meet them. They play the game sometimes publicly so you can approach them and send tells, they stream the game and read comments and they let you ask questions on the forums to be answered in live letters.

There was another mmo a decade ago, where the forums were a constant back and forth between "white knights" and "complainers" and very little feedback was looked upon. That was wow. Now look at wow. Not exactly in a good way is it? I apologise for not wanting to see XIV go the same way

WoW seemed to go that way, among other reasons, because the developers were attacked whatever they did, so they stopped listening altogether and became defensive. That is what we don't want and to avoid it we need to praise them sometimes and to be polite when we do complain.

[Akiudo]

WoW seemed to go that way, among other reasons, because the developers were attacked whatever they did, so they stopped listening altogether and became defensive. That is what we don't want and to avoid it we need to praise them sometimes and to be polite when we do complain.

i would argue that one of wows biggest problems actually was trying to find "forever content" , they knew they could never produce content faster than people would consume it (something which the ff forums proof pretty much every single day) so they opted for turning the gear grind eternal which made pretty much no one happy.

now i'll admit that ff does have shortcomings with making content last, there are several things i believe could be handled better in that regard, but considering in here you are a "white knight" if you say people are free to state their opinion but should do so in a respectfull tone and at least try to look at the bigger picture (instead of just homing in on what they personally believe to be the most important issue(s) without any regard for the possibility that in the grand scheme of things they might be wrong on that, or that the thing they have issue with indeed is "more important" than something else that gets worked on but would also take 5 times as long to fix) it's no wonder the devs are so silent.

[Jeeqbit]

i would argue that one of wows biggest problems actually was trying to find "forever content" , they knew they could never produce content faster than people would consume it (something which the ff forums proof pretty much every single day) so they opted for turning the gear grind eternal which made pretty much no one happy.

now i'll admit that ff does have shortcomings with making content last

Yoshi-P understands MMOs so he puts mount grinds into content. It feels that you only have to do the content once if you are a casual player, but if you are a completionist the mount farms turn it into forever content. There might be better ways to do it, but making it work for both casual and hardcore players at the same time is an achievement, compared with the WoW approach of making it required even for a casual player.

[Deveryn]

Yoshi-P understands MMOs so he puts mount grinds into content. It feels that you only have to do the content once if you are a casual player, but if you are a completionist the mount farms turn it into forever content. There might be better ways to do it, but making it work for both casual and hardcore players at the same time is an achievement, compared with the WoW approach of making it required even for a casual player.

Let's not forget things like relics and tomestone events, keeping everything relevant.