Seasons

[Shioban]

Nope. FFXI has seasons and even some object changes based on said seasons

I completely understand your point, and also that it'd be nice to see more varying weather, sometimes more really is better.

But, from an assets point of view, FFXI had considerably less in terms of assets that needed to be produced/edited to suit any changes they wanted to make.

FFXIV has a lot of assets, lets assume there are at least three seasons, that three new sets of textures, sounds, particle effects and more that would require a tremendous amount of effort to go back and reapply simple for the sake of 'changing the weather'.

The development team did a good job of adding in weather effects for each area;

Sagoli Desert = Windy/Heat-wave
Coerthas = Sunny/Blizzard/
The Black Shroud = Thunder/Rain/Fair/Fog

It's safe to say it would be unfair to have to go back and re-design The Black Shroud assets for the sake of 20 minutes of snow.