FFXIV's current state

[Risvertasashi]

These topics come up from time and time... and have since the beginning of ARR. But Stormblood brought with it all time highs in player population. So I think it's safe to say... what they're doing works. For me personally... it's story and world more than anything else, and I find the endgame fights relatively entertaining. Yeah, the systems in place aren't super innovative... but it's done 'well enough'.

As for trying different things... that's exactly what Eureka is. And Diadem was before that. And Palace of the Dead. And Rival Wings. And so on. Obviously Diadem was not successful. Eureka looks to be, despite being controversial. POTD has been very successful. I think we'll continue to see stuff like that. It's not exactly completely revolutionary, but. Well let me put it this way. There's been a ton of MMO kickstarter projects and even some real MMOs that either try wildly different ideas, or throwbacks to "good old days" MMOs and at best, they end up as niche things. Or you end up with stuff like Destiny, or small-instance games like Dark Souls/Monster Hunter.

There's that dream MMO concept that most people can't really nail down exactly, and occasionally a dev tries something out there and fails or ends up with a niche product. So here we are...

Also consider this. Overwatch is a game born of an abandoned MMO project when Blizzard, the only company besides Square Enix that funds MMOs without outside investors, when they realized they could not realistically do better than WoW. The golden days of traditional MMORPGs are over.