I would like to bring up that Yoshida takes all the promises that both 1.0 made by the company to accomplish additions to Final Fantasy XIV very seriously. A good example of this is FFXIV on ps3. It was an early promise that FFXIV would exist on ps3 and even though it was nearly pointless to release it on ps3 when ps4 was right around the corner, he still made it a priority. Even the previously mentioned 1.0 promises of group crafting and airships have been added to the game, even if not the way they were shown off in 1.0. We craft airships and it requires more than a single person to get this stuff done.

As for the large scale pvp that was teased early on by Yoshida and even the primal summoning that was mentioned. Yoshida has not abandoned these. I'm sorry I don't have the source, after years of development on this game it can be difficult to find specific interviews but Yoshida said the primal idea, which was directly tied to large scale competition between free companies, was just delayed. He said content like that will not be added until it made sense for the story and world. Also Yoshida likes to add systems one thing at a time, evidenced by MTQ's questioning of cross server play. PVP adjustments, free company additions seem like they are all foundations for this large scale pvp. I would guess that a lot of the idea for stormblood, its story and content, comes as an excuse for why the large scale pvp will make sense in the world.