This is why I like Square Enix and FFXIV. I migrated from ESO, which was my first mmo. I left that game for many reasons. Most of the reasons were related to bad gameplay and an obnoxious cash shop. (I mean, people complain about the Mog Station all the time, but at least it's a dedicated website and isn't advertising to you in-game!) The main reason, however, was that the team behind that game would never fix anything. From horse animation bugs to asset loading glitches to flickering assets/models flying around the screen to actual exploits, there are issues in that game that have been around for years.

What does all of this have to to with FFXIV? Simple: if people like Zenimax had possession of FFXIV 1.x, they would have just continued it and slapped numerous band-aids on it.

Square Enix, on the other hand, dropped a moon on it and re-wrote it from scratch.

That was a good decision.