ffxi has been slowly lossing mebers since WoW lauched. It is not getting major influxes of players. Which is why it is flawed. MMo can't last like that.They need a steady influx to keep servers from getting stale. Which is why most mmo are going for the larger audience and not the nitch one ffxi entered. Was ffxi a bad game, no. Just not a super popular one. Which is why its not doing so good, and starting to tone down the time consuming bits so more ppl will want to buy it.

Which is why ffxiv was advertised as a casual friendly game, they want a better/ stronger player base. Which is a smart idea.

I welcome anything (minus solo only) that will bring in more players to an ff mmo as they will making hunting for groups easier.