Literally Yoshi P said that he doesn't want the game to feel like a job and be a total grind fest. He said that people nowadays like to play other games too, so its purposely designed so that you don't feel like you have to spend all your time in this 1 game.

Whether that design choice is a good one is subjective, but thats what they've gone for.

I for 1 am okay with it... mainly why there were so many people during launch is because some "famous" twitchers played the game at launch so the viewers got bumped up. ffxiv in general will never have a huge viewer base, same as any mmo...