The people that are going to (are already?) complaining about there being no hardcore content are those who don't want to do anything but raiding instead of looking out at the beautiful world of Eorzea and learning about its people, culture, and history.
I'm a fan of the lore/visuals etc in this game, but of course the people that want a variety of challenging content in a PvE game aren't going to be interested with a variety of non-challenging content instead, and vice-versa. However, the casuals and lore junkies get class, job, and sidequests, Moogle and Beast Tribe quests, sightseeing logs, crafting, gathering, targetable and non-targettable NPCs, seasonal events, Relic quest... all on top of the MSQ.

Those looking for a challenge get... Extremes and Raids. Except casuals wanted to see the story of raids too so let's have the raid structure changed to give them an easy mode version and throw everyone else into an overtuned hard mode nobody of worth asked for.