Quote Originally Posted by Rhas View Post
What shareholders? SE owns it, just like originally with WoW and Blizzard.
You do realize Square Enix itself has shareholders, right? They can view servers merging or population dropping as failure depending on the incoming revenue. And they do have a say on what happens within the company, FFXIV included.

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/faq.html