Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Redemption]

In such a small community, it is hard to separate complex and simple contents, they just cannot coexist! They tried, by introducing unhinted quest, and scob with random mechanics, but I just don't see ppl allured to these. Ppl rather play mindless but high reward elite hunt!
I don't want to see them bringing the FFXI system here, that a single wipe may ruin the whole party/alliance several hours of grind and most endgame content takes about 3 hours!

Gonna address this really quick, one wipe in FFXI would not set you back an hours worth of exp... it would be more like 15 mins worth. Also the endgame content time varied widely from events that took 30 mins (nyzul island climb, or even normal assaults) to your long 3 hr example (dynamis).

[Felessan]

You have a world of MMO games that cater to your tastes: TERA, BLADE AND SOUL, AION, ATLANTICA, WoW, WildStar, etc. etc. etc.
I'm surprised you are so passionate about defending ARR as generic WoW-clone when you have plethora of other options to migrate to if it ever changed.
But for FF MMO fans ( FFXI, and FFIXV 1.23), this is really the last bastion.

You can go to the dying sun... oops, to FFXI of course.
I don't want to go somewhere else, as I want:
a) FF MMO (I was quite a big fan of FFXI). But I don't want FF11-2 as I am way past it (it was good, but it was 10 years ago) and it's really outdated and unfriendly for common people.
b) High Quality modern style MMO with all those hard-tested design choices that makes WoW how it is.
The truth is that WoW itself was a "masterwork clone" that gathered many of good ideas from that time, that made it successful. Then it improved them to the point we see now. (vanilla wow had the same "explore to travel", "20 min to go to destination", travel on your feet is a bless etc, until it was removed as "grind mechanics" that counterproductive for main masses of people).
And I want FF14 to do the same, get all the good people invented in the last 10 years, and some FF flavor, get a lot of people in, be successful - and continue to improve and add unique to ff14 features. Not just "copy-paste from ff11, even though it's outdated grindy stuff".

[Magis]

Snip

Ah yes, the design choices that had WoW lose 5mil subs since going the themepark route (Wrath and Beyond). That's 2.5x the population of FFXIV! Strange how the main subscription gain was when WoW was still an "old school" MMO back in Vanilla and TBC with actually having to travel (OMG!), leveling being a part of the gameplay, grinds, large complex dungeons, unique classes with their own uses, etc. But that's "outdated" I guess. It's the new age, where brains don't have to be used, everything has to be instant, and everything should be as the same as possible and streamlined.

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png