They should put actual MMO players on the development team.

[Alderton]

Citation #1: In this interview you can read that FFXIV's very own producer Naoki Yoshida states that people on the staff were requested to play MMOs because they had little experience with them. They're aren't really something you can just pick up over night in my honest opinion.

My interpretation of that quote is that there were certain people on the development team who were unfamiliar with MMO genre, and those specific people were asked. Not the entire team. And without specifics, this could easily be people in positions/departments that don't actually NEED to be thoroughly immersed in the genre to produce good, quality work.

#2 is impossible to cite at all. It's based on my experiences, and on my conversations that I've had with other players. I hear what I consider to be some of the best suggestions come out of hard core gamer's, and as a somewhat hard core gamer myself I've found a lot of my suggestions to be agreeable with hard core gamers as well. I also think that my belief that the more you do something the more understanding of it you will have may be correct based on common knowledge, but if you can show me evidence against it I could be persuaded against it I suppose(That was sarcasm in case it lost it's meaning being read).

Here's the catch, though - you're dead-set on this opinion of yours without actually knowing how the development side of the gaming industry works (assumption of mine). I'd love to hear your ideas as well, but it honestly falls out of the scope of our discussion (feel free to post if you want regardless, genuine curiosity).

My google-fu is weak, and I'm at work, so I won't spend long looking, but any good game design book you ever pick up will have sections dedicated to interacting with your end-user and deciphering what they say, and learning when to just straight-up ignore someone because it is clear they don't have a firm grasp on things. The strength of a designer is in knowing the target audience, and crafting an experience that is tailored to them. There are countless ways of doing this without having a dude who dropped out of college to tell him what is up.

Who do you think makes Barbie games? It isn't young girls, even though they play them the most.