I think the Hardcore vs. Casual debate is based on false premise.

Casual player: logs in every now and again, does leves, solo grinds for an hour logs out. Has maybe 1 50.

I think there are few casual gamers in the FFXIV universe. They log our for so long and play so little, they get lost at every patch release. I think a lot of them went back to Angry Birds, the ultimate casual experience. Log in, play some, log out.

Hard Core is also something different. I think a hard core person is the type that uses parsers, makes their own recipe books, bestiaries, stat charts. Someone who eat, drinks and breathes ffxiv in order to be the best player on the server.

I don't think there are a lot of Hard Core players here. A lot of them just got bored with the lack of content in the game. They burn through content so quickly that they log out for months at a time and play other things. They already have finished what's available for the Relic Reborn quest.

Most of the people are somewhere in the medium. They log in at the same time every day, play a good 3-4 hours daily, mostly into battle content that's easy to run through in that time frame, wear decent gear, and are good fun to play with.

A lot of Hardcore people would call them casual, a lot of casuals would call them hardcore.

In the end they are neither and they are the majority. FFXIV should cater to them and I think they're doing pretty well at that.