They're not turning it into a solo MMO. They're retroactively applying the aspects they already have with Trusts in ShB and EW to make all MSQ content 4-man content (dungeons and trials) useable with Trusts going back to the ARR. They aren't doing anything with 8-man yet so those will remain group-required.

They are doing this because when they look at the overall Final Fantasy audience, they find that players interested in Final Fantasy avoid their online MMO style games. They don't want gamers to do this. They want the people interested in solo RPGs to come experience the story here. So they are making that possible. But they're not making changes outside the base story. There's still plenty of optional group content that will be available for those who like the MMO grouping part of things. It won't be *everything* like other MMOs but that's always been the style of XIV. There is something for everyone here and they're really leaning into that idea more. I see this only as a good thing.

The people who are solo only are not going to mean less people in end game. Those people aren't even playing the game at all right now. If anything, enjoying the base solo experience could make them interested in branching out and lead to more interest in end game.

The patch schedule delay isn't that much. It's going from 3.5 months to 4 months. It's 2 extra weeks.

We don't know a lot about the Criterion dungeons except they'll be dungeons where the difficulty scales with number of players. I'm very interested to see where they go with this. It feels similar to POTD where it probably won't have strict role requirements but we're also getting an actual deep dungeon experience, too.

They even addressed the "getting less content" issue last night. There's a particular comparison slide that was very interesting for that.