hypothetical question: what would it take to update an entire game engine?

[Shougun]

I imagine everything that needs to be upgraded, with a decent amount of money and time, can be without having to restart from fresh and will be done so over time. Primarily those systems that should be improved are data storage type systems. Like they 'should' make a better glamour system, account wide things that should have been before, fix housing demand, add a crafting bank, etc. You can see they are slowly making changes akin to this though, with improvements to server architecture and such (2 slot dye system is likely in this vein). Naturally would be nice to have it all now, but uh.. there could be a thousand fair and reality given reasons why it hasn't happened yet and a thousand bad (from the consumer's perspective) reasons why. So.. /shrug. I hope they'll get there though.

Beyond data storage the other system I'd love to see poked is adjacent to that with improved sharding / seamless instancing, and then movement systems (such that we might get improved movement abilities and mechanics).

Personally if they are going to substantially change the structure of the game, gameplay wise, I'd go for a new MMO and allow FFXIV to stand next to it like FFXIV does to FFXI- though I'm sure that's years from now if it does happen (the graphics refresh does help show that it's unlikely to be in the "soon" side of things, that's a lot of effort to not allow it to mature and cultivate all the value infused). Can try to "WoW" it forever too I suppose, but then definitely need to improve those data storage systems.

I would not be surprised if it's on Yoshida's excel somewhere, or someone who helps keep the team's pacing. There is clearly someone on the team who is the drum master.