Thus far, FFXIV has been a laughable mess that has caused a great deal of damage to the Final Fantasy brand.
Yeah but you don't have a view of the big picture here.
when has a game company ever taken a released game off the market, said "sorry we freaked up", scrapped 90% of the game and remade it from near scratch due to bad reception? Especially in the MMORPG genre?
thats what Square Enix did to FFXIV. thats why its interesting and unprecedented.
in addition to doing that, they allowed their subscribers to play for free for a year while they made the current version of the game at least playable.
if FFXIV 2.0 is even remotely good when it comes out, it could set a new expectation for failed MMORPGs, which these days are just made Free To Play with Microtransactions and then milked for as much money as possible before being inevitably shut down.
in addition to that, it's coming to the PS3, where it could find considerable success, seeing as there is only one other MMORPG on the system.