Why I started playing FF14

[tocsin]

snip

This is exactly true, and I can offer a theory to this:

They are trying to milk a bit more money out of the playerbase to either fund heavensward, or a new game to get more numbers.

In the current market, other than WoW (which I don't consider current since its playerbase was established almost a decade ago) almost all MMO's make 75% of their money in the first 4 or 5 months, then taper off. the only way for businesses to take advantage of this is to either release a new expansion (to get the "New player" increase again) or to make a new game.