Note for the OP. FFXIV was originally designed for a PS3 which they eventually dropped support for. Additionally another impacting factor was FFXIV 1.0 was chewing up just about any PC that wasn't decently close to high end spec.

1.0 did have its issues on its own from a gameplay side. At the same time I think it was also suffering because not nearly as many people as they expected from FFXI tried it or chose to stay with it if they did. The visuals were a gigantic leap in quality from FFXI, however FFXI was far more rich in content and most players still had untapped side quests stories or even main stories after playing that game for years. Additionally they likely weren't gaining new players from other MMO's at a rate they expected due to a combination of available F2P MMO's and I think WoW was still in that period of flooding TV with commercials featuring celebrities, getting ads on as many websites as possible, and taking up like 10 pages for ads in game magazines, etc. Anything to get its face plastered everywhere possible and whip up its fanboy/fangirl base into a frenzy to run around the internet proclaiming it the first MMO made and greatest game in existence.