One month is about how long it took to get a your first 50 in FFXIV when it first launched too. The leveling curve was fine if you ask me. The problem though, was that there was NOTHING to do except grinding, which lead to some very bored and agitated players.

In my eyes, each class you cap should be an achievement in its own right. I'd much rather have a long leveling curve with a ton of things to do as you level up than a short leveling curve where the only content in the game is at the cap. Again, that's is just my opinion. Unfortunately, FFXIV is taking the latter direction. It's the classic journey vs destination argument all over again.

I wouldn't say that today's MMO crowd is more interested in getting capped level as fast as possible. People just don't want to notice the grind, and that's fine. That's exactly where FFXIV screwed up and it's exactly why we have this "3 day to cap" leveling curve. For SE, it was much easier to just adjust the rate that experience is gained and just push people to the cap as quickly as possible. That way they can focus 80% of their efforts in creating endgame content instead of fleshing out the content for all levels.

Personally, I'm hoping it's just a temporary measure considering the amount of work they're doing to remake the entire game. If it was me, I would have done the same. Hopefully 2.0 will see a steeper leveling curve, but with much more things to do while you grind. For me it'll already be too late as I really don't wish to create a new character from scratch. For new players however, I'm fairly sure they would rather have fun and enjoy their journey to the level cap instead of having to reach that cap before they can begin to enjoy the game.