One thing really doesn't make sense as of right now. If PSN has maintenance, which seems to be every damn day recently and the maintenance that is occurring now, had no warning apparently. I was up late on XIV last night, no posting about it on the main menu of XIV where there usually is.

So I get on today, and I won't be able to play for another 6 hours. Joy.
But I'm already paying for this game directly through Square Enix and their services, PSN isn't needed to run the game worth a crap. None of it's functionality is used to make XIV run, all it does is sit on the system, and SE's servers and software takes over from there.
XI didn't need Xbox Live Gold for those that played it on the 360, you could play without a subscription, so why is PSN so integral to XIV running if it doesn't do anything for it?