LuckyBancho data shows that FF14 is in decline

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Yeah. Make no mistake, even if the endwalker trend line falls in line with non shb expansions, the argument that veteran players need more content remains.

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Even if EW falls in line with ShB it still say a lot that 14 completely failed to hold the WOW refugees

No other game would see a massive injection of players, do nothing to retain them have the collective playerbase fall back to long term trends then argue that’s a good thing because they are still on long term trends, we could have had a new long term trend hundreds of thousands of people higher than the old one

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Even if EW falls in line with ShB it still say a lot that 14 completely failed to hold the WOW refugees

No other game would see a massive injection of players, do nothing to retain them have the collective playerbase fall back to long term trends then argue that’s a good thing because they are still on long term trends, we could have had a new long term trend hundreds of thousands of people higher than the old one

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WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

WoW and XIV are the polar opposite in many regards, so no surprise there really.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

WoW and XIV are the polar opposite in many regards, so no surprise there really.

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I would expect the same from a FFXIV refugee over in WoW as well. One is a main game, the other is a side game.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

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Idk I stayed LOL
But I did come a little early

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

I would point out that the numbers obscure an extremely important statistic: paying subscribers who contribute to SE's actual bottom line.

Fiscal Year 2020/2021 about 80 billion yen in net sales (ShadowBringers)
Fiscal Year 2021/2022 about 115 billion yen in net sales (Endwalker)

Year 2021 net sales of 39 billion yen (year 2 ShB)
Year 2023 net sales of 53 billion yen (year 2 EW)

There is no possible interpretation of the 14 billion yen difference in revenue over the second year of each expansion that would lead to "the game is less healthy, financially, in EW".

There is "noise" in these values, as the MMORPG group has Final Fantasy XI and Dragon Quest X included in those numbers.

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You sound like the devs. SE's bottom line is a useless metric as it does nothing to represent paying subscribers (like myself, like many people in the forum) who are simply not enjoying the direction the game is going in. The game doesn't have to be in a doom state to be missing potential. I would not say it's a good thing either that it's drawing in people who enjoy the braindead jobs, boring patch cycles and instanced solo content. New players, more revenue, don't correlate to a "healthy" game state outside the bare minimum consideration of how it lines corporate pockets.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

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That’s not the point

The point is the WOW refugees had enough of an impact it was worth editing parts of 14’s design in an effort to keep them

Not go “lol too bad so sad”

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

That’s not the point

The point is the WOW refugees had enough of an impact it was worth editing parts of 14’s design in an effort to keep them

Not go “lol too bad so sad”

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I don't think it was worth editing at all. They were only here because WoW was having issues. People play xiv for what xiv offers. People play WoW for what WoW offers. Neither needs to "edit" anything to capture each other's playerbases.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

I don't think it was worth editing at all. They were only here because WoW was having issues. People play xiv for what xiv offers. People play WoW for what WoW offers. Neither needs to "edit" anything to capture each other's playerbases.

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Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

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You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things. Why waste time trying and risking your core when you already know what they look for in a game? They don't have to change shizz for WoW folks. I guarantee you WoW ain't changing a damn thing if XIV players went over there.

Also you talk as if CBU3 is this massive team on xiv. News Flash it's not, and is why or patch cycle is the length it is rn. They have a whole 7.0 to focus on. I'd rather they make sure that is good than stretch themselves out for a CHANCE to appease the WoW crowd.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things. Why waste time trying and risking your core when you already know what they look for in a game? They don't have to change shizz for WoW folks. I guarantee you WoW ain't changing a damn thing if XIV players went over there.

Also you talk as if CBU3 is this massive team on xiv. News Flash it's not, and is why or patch cycle is the length it is rn. They have a whole 7.0 to focus on. I'd rather they make sure that is good than stretch themselves out for a CHANCE to appease the WoW crowd.

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The games aren’t that different, I swear people who think WOW chains you to the game haven’t played since MOP, if 14 tried they 100% could hold onto some of the WOW players, it’s not like the refugees are a monolith, regardless 14 didn’t even try and now EW may end up finishing lower than ShB started which is not a good result

If the team on 14 isn’t massive it should be considering that 14 is squares cash cow, extending the patch cycle achieved nothing other than plummeting player retention and they still made less content, 7.0 isn’t an excuse, tje game simply doesn’t release enough content

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

I would expect the same from a FFXIV refugee over in WoW as well. One is a main game, the other is a side game.

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FFXIV used to do absolutely fine in this regard though.

You used to have a healthy and strong community of raiders that would be often be clearing weekly without fail regardless of if we were just post or pre content drops. Go back to 2.x to 3.1ish and you'd regularly see groups queueing outside Wineport/Alex all year round. It's harder to gauge now with remote queueing for Savage but at least from my circle's experience we continued to raid solidly through the rest of HW and SB.

What's changed? The raid community never used to be a ghost town 2 months from a content drop like the way it is now.

To me it feels like SE have been throwing darts at a wall with side content and trimmings to see what sticks for years now which personally I don't have a problem with at all, but in the process they've let the fundamental core game underneath go rotten and stale.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things.

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The same point stands here as well really. I'd say it's as much the end game raid scene that's died as it is WoW refugees leaving. This game catered just fine to them for years, but seemingly it doesn't cut it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The games aren’t that different, I swear people who think WOW chains you to the game haven’t played since MOP, if 14 tried they 100% could hold onto some of the WOW players, it’s not like the refugees are a monolith, regardless 14 didn’t even try and now EW may end up finishing lower than ShB started which is not a good result

If the team on 14 isn’t massive it should be considering that 14 is squares cash cow, extending the patch cycle achieved nothing other than plummeting player retention and they still made less content, 7.0 isn’t an excuse, tje game simply doesn’t release enough content

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Well you're conflating my point. My point isn't about how much they release. It's about how they're stretched thin due to SE and so doing extra hoping to appeal to a seperate fanbase isn't a priority. 7.0 is. You say it's not an excuse but it IS the reality. It sucks sure but SE is to blame for the majority of that, not CBU3.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

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How would you have onboarded more WoW players without affecting the core?

More Bozja would not have been the way to go. WoW has no Bozja-like content and the only WoW players that would have gotten far enough to experience it would have already committed to playing FFXIV on a regular basis. 5.0 MSQ plus completion of Ivalice is a fairly big barrier unless they were buying job boosts and story skips.

WoW players were fed a diet primarily of PvP, M+, which does not have an equivalent in FFXIV, and raiding. We are seeing many WoW players enjoying the raiding since they're finally free of Weak Auras. They're now playing both games for the raiding.

No serious PvPer would pick FFXIV over WoW PvP, though it's possible that FFXIV PvP might have won over some of the casual PvPers (that I genuinely have no idea about since I don't PvP so I rarely talk to them).

FFXIV is still missing something that fills the M+ gap. If SE wanted to win over more of the WoW players, that's what they would need to focus on but it's going to take them time to develop it. Could something similar to M+ be the mysterious new Battle Content for Dawntrail?

FFXIV also won over many of the casual WoW players that realized they hated WoW's rush to endgame to start gear grinding design. They've enjoyed the story-based approach to leveling.

I wouldn't be surprised if FFXIV did latch onto 20% of those who came from WoW during the exodus. If FFXIV numbers have dropped enough that the active player base is not at least 20% higher than pre-Exodus, there is loss somewhere else.

The achievement graph is not the place to determine that since the data is collected from a subset of players that are self-selected. If any of LB's data is going to be accepted as representative, the place to check would be LB's actual census.

Active characters over free trial level cap:

April 2021 - 951,307 (pre-exodus)
Nov 2021 - 1,624,238 (post-exodus, pre-EW)
Jan 2022 - 1,347,764 (first census after EW release)
July 2023 - 1,137,275 (most recent - 19.5% increase over pre-exodus)

More numbers that might be helpful to identify "intensity" of player engagement in EW compared to the same point in Shadowbringers:

(Feb 2021) active Level 80 characters after release of 5.4: 692,683 out of 906,740 total active characters (76%)
(July 2023) active Level 90 characters after release of 6.4: 894,467 out of 1,137,275 total active characters (78%)

I'm not going to comment on the numbers - feel free to create your own interpretations based off things like alts, people subscribed only to retain their house, etc. Also feel free to make your own copy of LB's census to gather numbers from other census dates and data types.

It's odd how people like TC seem to be obsessed with wanting FF14 to fail.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

It's odd how people like TC seem to be obsessed with wanting FF14 to fail.

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I would argue that people complain because they don't want it to fail.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

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They also were clearly hoping to retain some of this increase, or else they wouldn't be looking to upgrade their server capacity. There were comments about this earlier on by LB (section on the Steam figures) on whether they could justify that expansion.

Frankly there would be little point in such an upgrade if they did not envisage retaining a good portion of these players, and at least enough to put the game above at or above SHB levels of subs (the peak for SHB incidentally prior to the exodus was in the order of 1,25m.) Otherwise, if the expectation was they'd never be able to retain them, and thus need do nothing to that end, it'd be a case of just ride it out. Maybe just expand capacity temporarily to accommodate, if possible. The game experienced a high influx of newer players since the WoW exodus, many of whom would have had more content to work through. I suspect the messaging that they were getting from their subscription data was that their plan, at the time, was working, as you had plenty of new players who had backlogs of content to keep them busy. However, survey after survey has shown a decline in the rate of new players coming into the game. Once the honeymoon period wears off and you're max level, working through the older content isn't really going to provide much of a challenge, for the most part, and there isn't that much to do with the newer content. I simply don't think DT will be able to deliver the same story hook as earlier expansions did. And all the while Dragonflight is delivering a pretty busy schedule of content since its release, catering to a variety of tastes in terms of how much time they want to spend on the game. I don't think it's really right to look at this with such a deterministic lens that they could do nothing whatsoever to retain the new players who came to the game, when even reverting to some of their earlier expansions' content models could've maybe salvaged the situation. The V/C dungeons, which they had mentioned vaguely when interviewed by Asmongold, did seem like a step towards that... just not a very well executed one.

Seems like they maybe misjudged what would interest this new audience as well as some of their existing players and that they thought they could alter the content model they were delivering (such that it has lower effective durability) whilst working on 16 in parallel - work which will continue thanks to the announced DLCs.

I was already somewhat underwhelmed when they revealed the basis of their go-forward 10 year plan. Nothing they've said about 7.0 suggests much different to me, or much that will help attract back a new playerbase they've already waved goodbye to, and I don't believe Yoshi has a good understanding of what 'younger' players want, either, or that he has a realistic appraisal of their game's ability to cater to that perception of them. It matters little to me as a player whether this is CBU3 or higher up in SE which is to blame. I imagine likewise it will matter little to their shareholders. The end result won't change. And it's not like Yoshi didn't want to work on XVI...

All of which is not to say the game will crater financially, especially if it hovers at or around the level of subs it had during SB or SHB. This is solely to do with failure to capitalise on the WoW exodus. It's one of the cashcows they want to use to fund their other projects, so it does feel like there was a missed opportunity to build on that. Maybe the goal now is just to try maximise mogstation spend from the customers they've been able to hold onto.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

All of which is not to say the game will crater financially, especially if it hovers at or around the level of subs it had during SB. This is solely to do with failure to capitalise on the WoW exodus. It's one of the cashcows they want to use to fund their other projects, so it does feel like there was a missed opportunity to build on that. Maybe the goal now is just to try maximise mogstation spend from the customers they've been able to hold onto.

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Did they state somewhere that they were going to use the exodus as a cash cow or is that your personal assumption?

I know some point to the new worlds as evidence but the planning for server expansion had existed pre-COVID (probably in anticipation of finalizing the Xbox deal) then got screwed up by the microchip shortage that lasted through COVID. It wasn't something that they dreamed up only after the WoW exodus. The exodus plus the Endwalker crush combined likely pushed them into moving sooner with it.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Did they state somewhere that they were going to use the exodus as a cash cow or is that your personal assumption?

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Nope, but it was also not what I was referring to. I'm referring to XIV itself given that it's a stable source of revenue for them. It stands to reason the exodus could be used to grow that.

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I know some point to the new worlds as evidence but the planning for server expansion had existed pre-COVID (probably in anticipation of finalizing the Xbox deal) then got screwed up by the microchip shortage that lasted through COVID. It wasn't something that they dreamed up only after the WoW exodus. The exodus plus the Endwalker crush combined likely pushed them into moving sooner with it.

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But that would certainly affect expectations regarding the scale required and changing circumstances affect whether you'd proceed with it or not even if it was drawn up beforehand. Proceeding with it says to me they expected growth and retention. Anyway, what I am saying is that there's no point in pressing forward with that if you expect the increase to be a blip and then for the population to fall back in numbers, i.e. if you think you have no hope of retaining those new players and that the population will recede following EW. If they really went into it thinking there was no hope of retaining these players, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I see little to suggest that was how they approached it and that they went into it thinking "well, we'll never be able to retain them anyway so why bother?" so much as they misjudged what it'd take. And while their hands may be tied to an extent by the work currently going on, that's not the reason given for the content design decisions in EW, so much as perception of player demand, e.g. here and here.

Games don't need to financially fail to suck. The game's defense force jumps to that in the same way that devs jump to "well players are turning in tomes for relics so they must like it". I barely play the game anymore but I pay my sub because a. I want the game to get better and b. I have a house plot I worked really hard to get.

I'd also point out there are lots of ways for the game to generate more revenue without necessarily capturing new players. Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

I would argue that people complain because they don't want it to fail.

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I think normal sane people complain for this reason. There are a select few who made XIV complaints a hobby it would seem tho.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Games don't need to financially fail to suck. The game's defense force jumps to that in the same way that devs jump to "well players are turning in tomes for relics so they must like it". I barely play the game anymore but I pay my sub because a. I want the game to get better and b. I have a house plot I worked really hard to get.

I'd also point out there are lots of ways for the game to generate more revenue without necessarily capturing new players. Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games.

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The SE mmo section had a fall of 22% according to the last SE financial report. Sure this also include FFXI and DQX, but we know FFXIV is the main part of that section. The easy answer would be "because FFXVI", but FFXVI was released on June 22, at the very end of that period, it feels wrong to say it's the reason of that fall.

This follow the same trend we observed in the game. So there is fall of revenue, but its real amplitude will be only be seen when they release the july to september numbers. But I would note it's the time period of 6.4, that acted as an eye opener for a lot of players, and the moment we began to feel that lack of retention. So Even the SE sales seem to support (or at least not contradict) the current narrative.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Games don't need to financially fail to suck. The game's defense force jumps to that in the same way that devs jump to "well players are turning in tomes for relics so they must like it". I barely play the game anymore but I pay my sub because a. I want the game to get better and b. I have a house plot I worked really hard to get.

I'd also point out there are lots of ways for the game to generate more revenue without necessarily capturing new players. Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games.

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I don't disagree with your points, with the caveat that, aside from encouraging stabler existing player retention, the other way you can increase revenue while subs remain constant is by pushing more reliance on the mogstation.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Games don't need to financially fail to suck. ... I barely play the game anymore but I pay my sub because a. I want the game to get better and b. I have a house plot I worked really hard to get.

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So, the game sucks, but not enough for the player to think to themselves "Is it really worth a monthly subscription to maintain a house in a video game?" The apparent answer is "Yes. Yes it is."

"Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions" is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games." is a misunderstanding of the numbers, as net sales incorporate all funds from subscriptions, not just "new players".

The poster chooses to ignore a rational view based on the number of actual subscribers of this game. It destroys the narrative that the game is in decline because ... reasons.

MMORPGs generate more revenue by releasing expansions. These attract both old and new players. It will be interesting to see the revenue generated during FY2025. Those numbers will speak more accurately about whether the game is in a true decline.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

This follow the same trend we observed in the game. So there is fall of revenue...

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The following is from the article quoted:

"This is a 22% year-over-year drop. Sales of Final Fantasy XIV were down year over year, which isn't surprising since this marked the post-Endwalker period, and also a greater return to something closer to pre-pandemic life across the world. Sales in 2020 and 2021 were buoyed both by other industry events, but also the pandemic affecting so many around the world."

Posters emphasize the first sentence and then ignore everything after.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

The following is from the article quoted:

"This is a 22% year-over-year drop. Sales of Final Fantasy XIV were down year over year, which isn't surprising since this marked the post-Endwalker period, and also a greater return to something closer to pre-pandemic life across the world. Sales in 2020 and 2021 were buoyed both by other industry events, but also the pandemic affecting so many around the world."

Posters emphasize the first sentence and then ignore everything after.

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Ho boy, cutting the sentence halfway through to argue when I litterally say in the second part of that sentence "but its real amplitude will be only be seen when they release the july to september numbers". In other words if it stabilize, we can say we only fell to the pre covid number, if it continue, we can probably say there is more to it.

And yes, it follows the trend of seen in the game. Up until It's only during 6.4 that we began to see some kind of loss of player, but it became more felt during the summer, which we have no numbers for.

If you want my opinion on that, I would also note that they conveniently ignore 2022. 2022 achieved to keep the its sales high despite covid lockdown were finished everywhere (I assume the talk in civil years and not Fiscal year because FY 2020 ended in march 2020, the same month the first covid lockdown was stated. Covid sales would not be that much boosted by covid effect. And if they talked about fiscal years, they still ignored 2022 and 2023). So whole "Covid has ended so we lost money" seem slightly fishy to me, to only happen now. It looks like a discourse for shareholders. But that was not the point of my post.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

So, the game sucks, but not enough for the player to think to themselves "Is it really worth a monthly subscription to maintain a house in a video game?"

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The dev team has garnered a lot of good will over time. You're saying because some people feel like the game has been going in a boring direction for a few patches that the only acceptable response is to cancel subscriptions and injure the game revenue? That sounds reductive and nonsensical. My patience is limited obviously but I don't think the solution is to immediately cancel my sub.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

"Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions" is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games." is a misunderstanding of the numbers, as net sales incorporate all funds from subscriptions, not just "new players".

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Net revenue for a game isn't just from subscriptions. It also comes from events, merchandise, mogstation (as someone else pointed out) etc. If revenue isn't itemized you can't just say "there's a revenue increase so subs must be healthy", whether you're taking about new or old subs. My point was that people often talk about this or that metric, and it can seem applicable, when it's not even fully informative or even relevant to begin with. To expound.....

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

MMORPGs generate more revenue by releasing expansions. These attract both old and new players. It will be interesting to see the revenue generated during FY2025. Those numbers will speak more accurately about whether the game is in a true decline.

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That isn't the only way they generate revenue. And again, their bottom line and even active subscriber number don't speak to a "healthy" game. Yes, the thread is claiming there is a decline based on achievements and could be false. However *my post* is responding to multiple players who keep implying that the game making money means it's ok and that the game is "healthy" or "good". That may be *your* definition and players arguing with you may have 50 bad arguments to the contrary (i.e. there's no content wahh, achievements, whatever) but what I am saying is that the problems with the game are more innocuous and haven't quite hit the point of "mass unsubbing" if that ever happens at all. To the point about revenue, if the game continues to make money regardless of the content standards and regardless of the type of player that doesn't mean the game is getting inherently better over time.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

The SE mmo section had a fall of 22% according to the last SE financial report. Sure this also include FFXI and DQX, but we know FFXIV is the main part of that section. The easy answer would be "because FFXVI", but FFXVI was released on June 22, at the very end of that period, it feels wrong to say it's the reason of that fall.

This follow the same trend we observed in the game. So there is fall of revenue, but its real amplitude will be only be see when they release the july to september numbers. But I would note it's the time period of 6.4, that acted as an eye opener for a lot of players, and the moment we began to feel that lack of retention. So Even the SE sales seem to support (or at least not contradict) the current narrative.

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Well, exactly. Someone earlier ITT was posting the complete opposite and saying revenue was up vs 2021. While I do think there some external factors driving this such as new game releases, economy, post pandemic workflow changes, etc, it wasn't even true to begin with that revenue is going up.

And to be clear what I mean is, I don't necessarily think this drop in revenue is ALL people criticizing the game and un-subbing. I'm sure some of it is. But future trends will give us more insight-- the performance of DawnTrail for example.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

Also, this is yet another piece of data that showed that the massive influx at the end of Shadowbringers was a fluke. The number of new players dropped sharply again in Endwalker.

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All jokes aside, everyone whom is not in denial knew this. XIV was a middle of the road mmo for nearly a decade. WoW players invade, it is the most popular mmo within that week? If XIV was "That guy," it would have been that guy somewhere between the near 10 years it was on the market prior to the WoW invasion.

What I took from this is how these MMO expansions names predict future outcomes......

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Games don't need to financially fail to suck. The game's defense force jumps to that in the same way that devs jump to "well players are turning in tomes for relics so they must like it". I barely play the game anymore but I pay my sub because a. I want the game to get better and b. I have a house plot I worked really hard to get.

I'd also point out there are lots of ways for the game to generate more revenue without necessarily capturing new players. Implying all revenue is driven by new player subscriptions is inaccurate, even if you spread it across three games.

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Yep, that's true. I heard that wow absolutely blew for several expansions but never really "failed." Some games can have very hardcore fanatical players who will continue to keep their favorite games alive, or jaded players will stick around hoping that things get better.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Yep, that's true. I heard that wow absolutely blew for several expansions but never really "failed." Some games can have very hardcore fanatical players who will continue to keep their favorite games alive, or jaded players will stick around hoping that things get better.

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WoW definitely had a bad time during the middle parts of Shadowlands, but clearly it hasn't failed. And Dragonflight has really turned things around and fixed a lot of the big pain points that players took issue with.

You know whats funny? So Ive been checking out whats the latest consensus in retail WoW and apparently, check this out.


The playerbase is apathetic to the slew of content releases with their recent major patches. Even some harboring the same feelings as the FFXIV playerbase where people feel like there's lack of content to do; DESPITE the fact that current WoW patches are much meatier and heavy in content than in FFXIV's case.

Now of course this may just be a growing case of apathy towards WoW in the first place since majority of players feel like everything is too bloated over there.

I just thought I'd share that bit since I find it interesting.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Yep, that's true. I heard that wow absolutely blew for several expansions but never really "failed." Some games can have very hardcore fanatical players who will continue to keep their favorite games alive, or jaded players will stick around hoping that things get better.

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Exactly. It's just as when the devs say "well people are doing X so it must be good". That glosses over how satisfied the player is with the content, when the participation occurred, how many other things is that player doing, etc. Devs can look at data and say "Lots of people have criterion dungeons" but if that was all in week 1 and then the players went back to basically not playing ththe game, is that a "healthy" piece of content? I have the highest relic right now-- I barely play the game and I wasn't happy with the process of the relic at all. My friends list and linkshells are pretty dead. The problem is the hard-core base you are referring to don't care and eat up whatever a dev says. The rest become jaded and hopeless before their inevitable unsub. Anyone with eyes and ears can see that mostly people on extreme ends of the spectrum are playing the game often right now. Ultra casual/ Second lifers/sprouts and the tiny % of people who do the only content in the game that's hard (which is a whole other problem and discussion as to why the game jis boring right now).

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

You know whats funny? So Ive been checking out whats the latest consensus in retail WoW and apparently, check this out.


The playerbase is apathetic to the slew of content releases with their recent major patches. Even some harboring the same feelings as the FFXIV playerbase where people feel like there's lack of content to do; DESPITE the fact that current WoW patches are much meatier and heavy in content than in FFXIV's case.

Now of course this may just be a growing case of apathy towards WoW in the first place since majority of players feel like everything is too bloated over there.

I just thought I'd share that bit since I find it interesting.

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Yes, you found out that the entire MMO landscape is a barren wasteland; the genre is a decaying husk, its players and games utterly irrelevant and seen as a joke by most gamers.

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Originally Posted by MonsutaMan

All jokes aside, everyone whom is not in denial knew this.

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Oh you will find a lot of denial if you looked through the history of the very same white knights who are now saying "this was always going to subside"

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

Oh you will find a lot of denial if you looked through the history of the very same white knights who are now saying "this was always going to subside"

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White knight or not...we are all paying the same sub. The only difference is they like/tolerate while you hate. Which makes more sense?

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Originally Posted by Renalt

White knight or not...we are all paying the same sub. The only difference is they like/tolerate while you hate. Which makes more sense?

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Just tell him to go outside. It works for me.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

Yes, you found out that the entire MMO landscape is a barren wasteland; the genre is a decaying husk, its players and games utterly irrelevant and seen as a joke by most gamers.

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And still you play.

During a content lull and in between Expansions and during some major big game releases like FF16, Baldurs Gate and Starfield? - FF14 is in decline?

Please tell us more; website and perceived user perception that may as be this manifest:

https://i.imgur.com/tkLxoyy.jpg

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

And still you play.

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https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6352790