I actually think its become their one stop excuse for everything, its more likely "we can't be bothered to spend all this time making X feature work when we only have to rip it out in 9-10 months time"

SE used the PS2 limitation a lot in FF11 and this server thing is basically the same IMO.

It's much more likely that the exsisting code is so bad that they are having a hard time changing things without it causing issues elsewhere.