FFXIV is based too much on extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, motivation. In FFXIV, the fun comes from the rewards much more so than the activities done to obtain the rewards. Most activities aren't fun in and of themselves. That's a real problem, especially when even the rewards are less exciting than in other games. We have ONE BiS set, it is ONLY obtainable from a combination of tomes and the current endgame raid, and the itemization is BLAND (yay bigger numbers).
That's exactly the issue in FFXIV. I think it has to do with how SE seems intend to cut development costs.


So people want an MMO that isn't an MMO?

I thought grinding was just part and partial to the MMO formula.
What made wow popular was that the game removed most of the tedious elements (including long grinds, those in wow were rather shorts, grinding a zodiac weapon in FFXIV was far grindier than any content of wow) which were found in the games when it was released.

OK then, let's hear some games that aren't designed to keep people playing. I would really love to hear about all these amazing and fun games that are designed so the developers will not make any money.
Wow was quite entertaining (and still is to some extent) and I'm pretty sure blizzard made quite a bunch of money with it.