I'm finding a lot of non-extreme, non-unending folks really losing interest in the game throughout all of the 4.1 patch.

Rabanastre was really fun, don't get me wrong. But after the first three weeks or so, it gets stale. The high-end folks stop after 4 or 5 weeks, and the remaining teams tend to either be good or really, really, REALLY bad.

Even if the developers weren't ready to push for the content yet, there's still opportunity to make a "coin" or "token" that's collected throughout the expansion and first patch (this is 3-6 months) of collecting items to prepare for the relic. This could get more players psyched up for one or more than one token to prepare. I think 3 months after an expansion, people ask, "what now?" and give up. This could be that linking incentive.