Insert "legacy code is a real thing" post.

Servers and PCs and airplanes and other devices all over the world are riddled with over-complicated dumpster fires of code, held together with toothpicks and scotch tape in places that any programming team will rightly be mortified of touching at any point.

It happens with stuff way simpler than an MMO. You do what you can with it, but at the end of the day you're stuck with a lot of dumb problems until you can get the whole thing replaced. Quite frankly, it's probably taken an astounding amount of engineering creativity behind the scenes to get some of the things we have gotten so far.

There's nothing "out of touch" with being honest about the state that your game is in. The code is terrible. They admit it. But it's the reality they have to operate in.

The game is not getting rebuilt from scratch because that just doesn't make business sense - compare the ROI of "less complaints from FFXIV players" to doing any number of other things with those resources, including just making a new FF MMO instead for 2025 or some such.

The fact that a graphics engine update is theoretically feasible is good news, at least, but I bet there's no shortage of cynicism about that from the business end either.