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OP what decline? Balmung is no where near decline. Every zone I visit has lots of players. Especially the cities. Some questing. Some crafting. Some RPing. But declining? Not on my server. It's hard to find a zone that ISN'T overcrowded. There's a few, which I am able to do fates on. But overall, the game seems to be doing a hell of a lot better than say... World of Warcraft.
How did this thread hit 27 pages? And it's from the guy that wants this game to be FFXI 2.0! (not saying that wouldn't be totally rad, but that could never happen).
Please face reality everyone: Neither this MMO, nor any of the ones that have launched recently, and most likely all the ones that will launch in the next couple of years, will be WoW killers. What we've learned is that MMOs will be huge at launch then immediately start to tank, and then stabilise with their own audience, ranging from decently big to pretty niche. I always expected FFXIV to be pretty niche, personally. It's WoW, but with a FF twist and a bunch of mechanics from newer MMOs.
This game doesn't need 12 mil subscribers to be successful; it can go off of a fraction of that. The game still is crazy crowded; partially because it's a fairly small game world and we tend to get funneled into a few zones/instances. I've been there for MMOs on their last legs and this doesn't yet have the atmosphere of one. It might if it doesn't get a good bit more endgame content to do soon, but we're okay for the moment.