Quote Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth View Post
They used to be a lot more active and interactive.

Honestly, I believe the community itself drove them off. A combination of bad behavior and being unable to let anything go and seeing every change as a perceived slight.
I doubt it's the players as much as changing job duties as companies try to give them more to do instead of hiring additional staff. If FFXIV is like other games, the community team has other responsibilities than just gathering feedback from the forums. They also need to gather feedback from other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, coordinate local publicity and events, etc.

Also any time someone "official" appears in the forums, posters tend to start behaving in unusual ways, whether it's trying to curry favor or gain attention for their pet ideas. I used to watch the WoW forums with some amusement as a controversial topic would get limited discussoin until a Blue decided to post something. Suddenly a thread with 100 replies in 2 days would have 500 within 6 hours of the Blue post.

By keeping their distance, posters are more likely to offer more genuine feedback rather than just post in the thread because a CM had also posted.