You bring up quite a bit of good points there, Dragonheart. A few I never even considered before. I totally agree with having PVP ready at launch for the reasons you mentioned. If the game doesn't have PVP at launch it could hurt the game's initial launch and subsequently have a detrimental affect on overall sales. Just as you state, reviewers and websites will probably be critical of the game for that reason, and that reason alone. As silly as it may seem to most of US that follow the game, or maybe don't care for PVP much, or that played 1.0 that didn't have it.....trying to attract as many players as you can to your new shiny MMO has to have it all.....and ALL at launch.
There are still people out there that have NO IDEA that ARR is coming out. There are still people out there that have NO IDEA that 1.0 was fixed, that there's a new dev team and they rebuilt the whole game from scratch. This needs to be taken into account when deciding what to include in the "final version". Because a potential mmo player may have interest in ARR after hearing about it, read a review of the game and say "pfftt ...it doesn't have PVP?? Looks like they never fixed FFXIV like they said they were going to". Let me remind you that there are people out there that have no idea FFXIV was remade at all, and I'm sure those people wouldn't know, that if PVP isn't included at launch...... that it'll be added in a later patch.....they'll just assume if it's not there, the game doesn't have it period....and go somewhere else. There goes a potential customer...
Now granted for most of us....maybe the point I bring up is 0.0 but there are people out there that would be comfortable enough with a new MMO if it offered similar things like PVP. It could make their transition-from a game they've been playing for years that offered this kind of content-much easier and makes them feel more at home, so to speak.
I'm just concerned about this issue because ARR needs a successful and profitable launch. A nice jolt in sales and subs to make up for what they lost....and also so we can have a future with ARR.