Ironically people that are cynical seem to think anything logical is an "excuse" or "white knight" or "defending". Rift wasn't rushed out the door, XIV was. Rift doesn't need a complete foundation overhaul (It's WoW with a different storyline using a basic concept from XI - Campaign/Besieged/Dominion Ops), XIV does.
I don't know about SE being hurt by their silence, as they have their massive offline library, including PSN releases that's doing very, very well and XI, it's just people are growing more and more critical over this game they're not seeing the bigger picture that when you need to redesign an entire MMORPG, you're going to be busy, and looking at the Japanese forums and reading what Yoshida wrote, they're just not sitting on their hands like some want to truly believe.