Recently a return to FFXIV promotion started. Good to see these. One significant feature that attracts many people is housing - probably houses more than apartments/fc rooms.

Since you have the housing neighborhoods instanced not open world (as in Vanguard, DAOC etc.) would it take that much to add more neighborhoods? On many servers, and not just the most crowded, plots are rarely available. A housing addition would be a great promotion to encourage returnees.

Another plus would be allowing people that buy an expansion to actually play it after finishing ARR. The 100 MSQ interregnum between ARR and HW is mandatory now and that annoys a lot of people that want to actually get to the new zones/jobs. IMO let people play HW after finishing ARR and play the new one after HW - the interregnum quests are good to keep us busy while waiting but you will sell many more expansions if people can actually jump in and play them.