Quote Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe View Post
Think the problem they mentioned in the past is that, unlike in the west where the criteria is 'knows how to program games', over there it's 'knows how to program games, and is able to speak japanese', which means way less total people to recruit from.
IMHO it goes deeper than that. FFXIV 1.0 outsourced significant amounts of world design to an unnamed Chinese studio, needless to say, that's not a route I can imagine SE going down again

The other massive elephant in the room is simply F2P game money. It's been a huge market for much longer in Asia and it's free of the development stigma that it carried for the longest time in the west. Luring developers away from that potential money isn't easy or cheap.