The Great FFXIV Exodus of 2024

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

If you want to utilize Steam Charts as your bellwether on how well a video game is doing, World of Warcraft is on its last legs, as there are zero players on Steam.

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I was just gonna say, these threads are always kind of amusing to me because people will inevitably bring up WoW as if that's a viable alternative, when if you look at the WoW forums it looks like it's the worst game ever developed. And people spend their time over there praising this game.

I don't think the concerns of what people are saying here should be completely discounted, but at the same time, it's the forums. The forums are always the haven of the haters. Of any game.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

I know that stories like this are only anecdotal, but I've had similar; most of the people I played with during ShB largely went away by the middle of EW, and few of them came back for DT, even fewer have stayed for 7.1. At this point it's only a handful of FC members that I play with that still log on, the others only come back when there's a free login campaign.

The use of Steam charts can only tell part of the picture since it's only part of the playerbase, but it's still a rather large sample size we can work with, and as such shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't include PS4/Xbox/etc. Barring major port issues, if 10% of Steam players up and left the game, there's a good chance that around 10% of the other platforms also lost players (give or take some margin of error) because of similar reasons to those Steam players.

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The thing with anecdotal evidence is while it is just people recounting what they have experienced, these particular stories are becoming more and more common in the most recent months. It can't take the place of actual metrics, but it can be used as a supplement along with what little we have to work with to help discern trends and patterns, at least among specific parts of the community.

I have to word it the way I did above because what someone experiences is, of course, unique to themselves. Based on current trends in the game, I would expect people who are, for lack of a better term, involved in 'Etheirys' Nightlife (or Eorzea's Nightlife)' scene are not going to experience these things as much as those of us who are not involved with it. I would also contend communities of older players (those of us who have been around for a long time) are more likely to see it for one reason or another.

What is inconsistent is the rate in which groups of people form and fall apart. I am seeing a lot more, well-established, FCs having issues maintaining active membership these days compared to some of the worst times back in the ARR/HW era, suggesting something has changes that is causes FCs that traditionally have above average churn to have even more churn than they had before. FCs that tend to be a bit more transient and are more season-driven are not able to maintain active members beyond a couple months and they are not returning for patch content - suggesting a lack of interest to return to the game for one reason or another.

From my experience as a 2.0 player, my main guesses as to why this is happening is due to poor patch cadence, lackluster story, and uninspired/boring class/job design (particularly healers, which I am one of). Many players I have known for well clear of 6-8 years at that point faded out around that time, while people who were normally extremely active became seasonal players during that same time frame. The patch content in EW didn't give players who wanted to play the game a lot to work with outside of the normal grind, which I believe further increased the rate of players transitioning away from being extremely active to being more seasonal and, in turn, eventually leaving the game now.

I will need to discuss ShB separately for some specific reasons. ShB is a bit of an anomaly due to COVID and the surge of new players that occurred during that time, so it is hard to evaluate ShB properly. With that said, I observed a lot of people were active despite this most likely due to travel restrictions and using MMOs as a means of socializing. Since this isn't going on anymore, I do expect some of the drop-off of players is just due to these players slowly transitioning back to a normal lifestyle, but this reason I think is not as major as the one stated above and some of this drop-off could actually be due to the above reasons as well, since these players would now be entering their 2nd expansion so to speak.

How all of this above plays into the Steam metrics, I really don't know. What I do know is that the Steam metrics are sufficiently large to the point you can use them as a sample size of the population at large, and thus they should not be ignored when trying to evaluate the health of the game. I have stated before the game is going into a period of regression and moving backwards, with the Steam metrics only being one piece of evidence to this argument.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The irony of this is that I *am* one of those "green players" who started post-Endwalker (December 2022), hadn't even been playing the game for two years before Dawntrail launched, and yet I'm eyeballing that "Cancel Subscription" button as much as any jilted longtime vet because the mobile version pretty much nuked whatever trust and faith I had in Square-Enix when it comes to the PC version.

The sad part is though, I don't really have another MMO to go to now. I refuse to return to WoW, I'm sure as hell not going to play Square-Enix's *other* MMO, I'm kinda "eh" about picking up SWTOR again, and I'm not convinced about trying PSO2 or ESO. This isn't just quitting FF14, this might be where I quit the entire genre because there's literally nothing left I want to play anymore.

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I've been playing LOTRO again. But I'm also a Tokien fan, so your mileage may vary.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The irony of this is that I *am* one of those "green players" who started post-Endwalker (December 2022), hadn't even been playing the game for two years before Dawntrail launched, and yet I'm eyeballing that "Cancel Subscription" button as much as any jilted longtime vet because the mobile version pretty much nuked whatever trust and faith I had in Square-Enix when it comes to the PC version.

The sad part is though, I don't really have another MMO to go to now. I refuse to return to WoW, I'm sure as hell not going to play Square-Enix's *other* MMO, I'm kinda "eh" about picking up SWTOR again, and I'm not convinced about trying PSO2 or ESO. This isn't just quitting FF14, this might be where I quit the entire genre because there's literally nothing left I want to play anymore.

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Neverwinter is fun but it is extremely grindy

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Originally Posted by Astronema

The final straw for me was doing the new dungeon and watching the flying rocks overlap with the golem mob to form a floating sperm. I'm there fighting a giant testicle with a tail sticking out...

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Your avatar looks amazing! :)

Anecdotally:
I'm having fun, my FC is still going, my artist friends still play, and most of my friends list is still active, or rotates in and out as time and their finances allow. Most of the streamers I follow who used to play it still do, though how much varies. None of which is unusual to me. Some have come back to it after an extended break.

A silent majority? Certainly not. Significantly more than have the last few years? Oh absolutely. This is the most displeased i've seen the playerbase at large since i started back in mid HW. Is this a WoW Shadowlands esque moment happening in 14? No. Though I think it's not completely unlike certain smaller exoduses that happened to WoW in Cata, WoD, and BFA.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The sad part is though, I don't really have another MMO to go to now. I refuse to return to WoW, I'm sure as hell not going to play Square-Enix's *other* MMO, I'm kinda "eh" about picking up SWTOR again, and I'm not convinced about trying PSO2 or ESO. This isn't just quitting FF14, this might be where I quit the entire genre because there's literally nothing left I want to play anymore.

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I've decided to stay away from MMOs because if WoW and FFXIV can tumble this badly there is a good chance less popular MMOs aren't any better. On the other hand, I picked up Sims 4 again and I've been having more fun messing around with my old saved game for 2 days than I've had in this game since 7.01. I'm leveling, doing achievements, playing with character creation, making outfits and building houses, which were some of the best parts of FFXIV for me when I still liked it. Single player games can offer many of the same things MMO players enjoy, and they let you get straight to the fun part instead of making you wait lockouts and grind filler stuff to access it.

It can't be a Great Exodus because I'm not going anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I've decided to stay away from MMOs because if WoW and FFXIV can tumble this badly there is a good chance less popular MMOs aren't any better. On the other hand, I picked up Sims 4 again and I've been having more fun messing around with my old saved game for 2 days than I've had in this game since 7.01. I'm leveling, doing achievements, playing with character creation, making outfits and building houses, which were some of the best parts of FFXIV for me when I still liked it. Single player games can offer many of the same things MMO players enjoy, and they let you get straight to the fun part instead of making you wait lockouts and grind filler stuff to access it.

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Also playing way more Sims 4 than FFXIV right now. Reaper is a really fun job in Sims 4.