Look at the 10th Vanadiel Census:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/gui.../10/index.html

It shows they keep pretty damn in depth records of even minimal stuff. I understand they wanted to step away from XI, but some of this data kept kinda shows (including the previous data before XIV release) what a lot of players like, what a lot of players do and what a lot of players expect at least in term of their MMOs.

While they didn't have to make a direct clone, it's pretty clear they shouldn't have stepped away from it so much and XIV would have likely done so,so much better than it did.