The Graphics update was unnecessary

[Malthir]

Then that just means WoW was pretty unique with that.

I really, really do not see how movement is a barrier to entry. The responsiveness is an issue, sure, especially with it making animations a priority over responsiveness.

I mean, it was pretty standard when it released (as bizarre as it was compared to single player games), but it probably isn't now with modern games challenging the norm. But I don't honestly know to what extent SE will compete with these games. The graphics update looks like the compromise they are willing to make on that, only meeting it half way but not going nearly as far.

Maybe 8.0 can be the physics and character customization update, we will have to see what happens.

It was not unique to wow and it wasn't unique at the time. The issue of movement in FF14 comes down to the 1.0 version which was bad, the new team had a little over a year to turn it around and plane sliding movement is 100X easier to do than collision based movement it's completely reasonable for that to have been the choice back then since adding in jump was already a huge improvement on what was there.

The point I'm making however is not just about movement. The shaders were not going to be what put new players off, they don't really offer great value to the playerbase, there are much larger issues that could have been started now and fixed sooner, but they went with an unnecessary and divisive visual update.