How long do we have left?

[Saylor]

As of April of 2009 FFXI had over 2 million subscribers.

Hate to nitpick but its not subscribers, its characters.

Still though with the catastrophic failure that FFXIV was I believe alot of people have come back that quit forever. God knows I keep getting bugged from people coming back who gave me all there stuff thinking they would never be back.

[Swords]

Hate to nitpick but its not subscribers, its characters.

Still though with the catastrophic failure that FFXIV was I believe alot of people have come back that quit forever. God knows I keep getting bugged from people coming back who gave me all there stuff thinking they would never be back.

Blizzard uses the same methods for counting WoW subscribers, they use it as a draw to attract people with the thought "Hey alot of people play this, it must be a good game". Now how many of those 6 million players thay have stickerd on the box are actually mules. If I had to give an honest guess, at least 3/4 of their claimed playerbase.

To address the concerns over the server merges, I would not doubt that SE merged the servers in order to cut maintence costs and with periodic upgrades the servers were probably improved to where they could handle a greater capacity of players.

As far as FFXI being on it's last legs people have been saying that since ToAU had finished. Four years, one expansion and six mini-expansions later FFXI is still here, still has at least another few years of planned content left in it.