Because they are on the ball more than I can ever remember. I've been gone for a bit messing around with FFXIV. I came back yesterday to do some update stuff, mostly take my SAM to 85.
When I got an invite to an Abyssea party, they informed me I can now warp directly from Port Jeuno to the Maw. A needless time sink repeated every day - removed. Then when I enter I saw I can purchase keys in stacks now. Sure everyone has been saying "it would be nice, if we could just buy keys in stacks", but most of us that have been playing these developer's game for enough years didn't expect them to implement it, at least not any where in the near future. But, they did.
So I get to my party and I hear someone say "sellable items are in pool, cast lots". Seriously? Everyone wanted this feature, but again, I don't think many expected SE to listen and implemented it so quickly.
So after a smoothly running Abyssea alliance, I hit 85 fairly quickly and decide to start working on upgrading my relic GK. I figured this would take me a few weeks again, after how long the previous trials took. But, SE listened to the complaints of us. Before we were required to kill an absurd number of mobs and we had to have the killing blow with our specific weapon skill. This made the trials boring, because the way it was setup we almost needed to do it solo, because teaming up made it difficult to consistently get the killing ws blow. Now, they allow anyone with the same relic weapon to team up and if anyone kills a mob with the ws, everyone gets points. No more going solo, while alliances who just need kills grab every mob in the zone. I found a group of 6 or 7 Amano users, and not only was it many times faster, it was actually fun.
The point is, I can't remember SE ever addressing so many concerns by the playerbase so shortly after the players asked for them. However, if you cross the virtual pond over into Eorza the "bang-head" moments where you think "seriously SE? why are you going out of your way to make this so painful?" are happening left and right. It really feels like the majority of the original XI team has packed up to XIV and left some new guys in charge of XI. I just hope the old team doesn't get too upset when they hear these new guys are listening to the playerbase and tell them to stop doing that.
We'll see how it all plays given some time, but I personally had more fun in one night back at FFXI than I have the last few weeks trying to give SE the benefit of the doubt in the mess that is FFXIV.
Edited, Sep 11th 2010 1:08pm by Vawn43