FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[Galibier]

Actually, ESO and SWTOR (and to an extent GW2) have had a lot of success since their move to F2P. Despite SWTOR having the worst F2P model in existence and the most limitations, the game community is still quite large, and it only got bigger with the release of the last expansion (and the movie of course). And they just refreshed their talent system (much like WOW's). /snip

Actually SWTOR hasn't. Yeah people will say "it made X money" but read the earnings calls. Since its f2p transition it has either broken even or been seen as a loss, all the f2p transition did was stop an absolute free fall. Also according to NCSofts financials GW2 has lost money big time over the last year. Finally there is no way to tell if ESO is now successful or not, private companies have no obligation to publically release earnings.

[Galibier]

To the OP... Part 1

1. RIFT. They balance the game now around 61 point builds. A couple hybrids survive by chance. The idea of the soul trees was great for players but a nightmare for developers to keep balanced because of synergies.

2. SWTOR. You haven't needed to use a calculator for over a year because not you get "utilities" but the utilities are such that everyone takes the fact same ones,

3. Wildstars just massively dumbed down runes in Sept.

4. EQ2 is an apples and oranges thing imo. That is a game that is now going on for over 10 years. Procs for the longest time, were rare as all heck. One of the biggest reasons for procs on gear became common was to maintain a sense of gear prog. without crazy stat numbers and/or unintuitive new stats (such as crit MIT) it wasn't about making gear "unique".