Naoki Yoshida : In truth, more than the game engine, which is getting a little old and limiting us in terms of possibilities, the biggest challenge with FFXIV - which offline games don't have - is the technology and the exchange between servers and clients. It imposes some very specific limitations on us, and really requires us to be flexible in our development and to have the means to compensate for the kind of problems that can arise. It's been our headache, literally, for over 10 years now. We've got lots of ideas, we'd like to implement them, but how are we going to manage to do so with the limitations that exist as a result of being an MMO?
That is what's so difficult about FFXIV. Every time you take an action in the game, the game will communicate with the server, check for cheating and come back afterwards. This creates a delay that an offline game doesn't have, since there's no need to check on the Internet. This limitation is something we've had to deal with for years, and it does limit us somewhat in what we can manage to implement in the game.
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