Add-ins and plugins are becoming more widely-accepted across the community and even casual players love to use them. It’s become an integral part of the game experience on PC. Not everyone uses them, but a good chunk do. It’s a bit like WoW, and a lot of people love that these days. Let’s face it, FFXIV is nine years old. All games that old have some kind of modding scene. Everyone seems to be happy with it, even (and especially) with FFLogs. Whatever Yoshida wanted with a causal MMO is no longer valid when he outsourced so much of his game under community control. The mob decides what the rules are, and they’ve spoken loud and clear. Sadly, those looking for the classic, vanilla experience will have to move to console and not run any endgame content outside of PF.

By the way, static leaders can and do look up your raid resume on FFLogs. Many people will defend this as adding to the core game. There’s not much we can do about it if we want to enter a static. So even if you’re not running mods, you’re affected by them in the most invasive way possible: having all of your instances logged for public view without your consent. And because the mob generally overpowers the concerned few, it’s really out of our hands if we want to join a static. Most of us are powerless in this sort of environment when they have a substantial software-based advantage over us teetotalers.