Yeah, I'm under the impression they didn't take the critics of EW patches as seriously as they should have, probably because the subs were still there. Leaving a mmo is a long process, and DT has been a breaking point for a lot of players. When players reach that point (despite the whole "loosing your house and probably never get on again") the problem is already very deep. WoW lived that with its exodus, and at least Blizzard wanted to get their game right, and tried to fix thing up. It worked. But I'm pretty sure not all MMO can do that. Wow could do it because it's wow. Technically, I think SE could do it, but with their "we don't want to invest in FFXIV" mentality, I fear they won't be able to fix the problem.
The worst thing in this story is that the lessons from the period between 1.0 and 2.0 has been forgotten. Discuss with your players, listen to their complaints and try to do things so the players want to stay. Instead of that they fished for new players they might get by trying to make the game so solo friendly.