Of course, when you think of all those things, what you probably think of is Steam, which does all of those things quite well. The PlayOnline Viewer, on the other hand, has proved excellent at doing... well, it mostly means more clicks before you get into FFXI. And as Pet Food Alpha has recently noted, it also seems to be hosting wholly unmoderated explicit chat rooms.
Square-Enix has stated that Final Fantasy XIV will not use the viewer, which means they seem to have abandoned it as a poor idea. Steam works, in part, because it sells a variety of both online and offline games, most of which don't come from its parent company. With a clunky interface and strange functional restrictions on it, it's hardly a surprise that the service never took off... but in light of recent events, the company's policy to ignore it completely might not be the best plan.
