Worldwide server population count for 12/17 (JST) across all servers

I see that Square has allowed us to see server populations again after it being disabled for over 1 year.

A collaborative effort by the denizens of 2ch has been made with them totaling up population numbers across all servers - this was the same feature they were using back during the first few months of the game to get the numbers:

http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/5551028.html

Title of the article, according to my Japanese-savvy friend is "FFXIV's population search count option has returned! The population has gone down a lot. lololol"

From what I can tell, this is an informal population survey - a bunch of people from 2ch - each person from each of the servers brings up the population count function at the same time of the day during a peak hour (not sure of the exact time, but it's a fixed time to maintain consistency). They report it to the thread and tally it up on a daily basis. Take it with a grain of salt.

FFXIV at one point had a peak population of over 47,000 players. I'm assuming this was in relation to some sort of patch or event that happened during that time? I don't know. The chart shows the population going up and down for a bit (but generally down) until the middle of November where it started making a downward spiral.

This game lost half its player base in one month.

A small update happened on that last week, then the feature was disabled. It's back now, and this is the current count across all servers for 12/17 JST. About 12,000 people; roughly 1/4th of the peak population's amount.

This is post patch (a time of a lot of interest) and pre-subscription (a time where we will lose a good chunk of players). This is also during the weekend where people have time to play, so you can consider this actually an ideal time in FFXIV's rocky history until 2.0. Keep that in mind.

My friend just showed it to me since I still play the game and he has no plans on coming back, so he's not sure if this will be updated on a daily basis and isn't going to bother sifting through 2ch threads for daily updates. I'm going to bother him a bit to try to find more info as time moves along - I want to see if the population post-patch will get higher, and how much of a drop we get once the subs hit.

What's pretty depressing about this is that with the sub model restored and if we were to keep this population, Square would only be getting $120,000 USD/month from subs alone. Even if they kept the original price of $15/month, that would be still only $180,000/month for them. I have no idea if that even pays for the upkeep costs of their servers plus the monthly salaries of their devs. Not my problem, as Square is a big boy and their devs are adults who are probably well aware of the current situation - so no soppy stories for them.

The issue here is if that price cut was enough to keep that 12k population number from getting any lower. We'll just have to see once subs start how many players we lose, and most importantly, how stable the population gets from now until subs start and from when subs start all the way until the 2.0 beta.

I do give Square kudos for bringing back the population count. They swallowed their egos on this one and they have to be given credit for that.

100% sure your info is 100% inacurate

you will always get people trying to guestimate these things and they will usualy go with the number they feel will get them the most attention(and in this case saying we only have 12k is probly a very very undersatimated number)

from what people are telling me we are probly sitting closer to 40k

well i see enough people on my server to make me happy =) cheers

40k or 12k it doesn't make much of a difference. That's only 1-5 million dollars a year in revenue. They made $40M off the launch selling retail boxes. And at one time there were 600,000 players not 47k. The 47k is talking about October 2010.

12k is about right. I'd say it's actually about 10k and the extra 2 thousand are here to check the new patch out. I knew there were 27k players in December 2010, and if you go by your old linkshells there's less than 1/3 of your friends still playing. Approximately 1/3 of 27k is 9k or so. I'd say 5 or 6 thousand people are going to stay and pay the fee for the next year. I just don't see why they want to close the extended free trial for, as Jon Stewart would say in Death to Smoochy, asswipe money. On the other hand, this game has such a bad stigma that anyone willing to check it out is likely to suffer so much peer pressure that the population is unlikely to grow before 2.0 anyway. Still, if I were them, which I'm not, I would keep the extended free trial going and just count the lost potential income as money out of the existing Final Fantasy war chest.

To give you an idea of the trade off I'm talking about, to pay for FFXIV to not start charging it's miniscule playerbase for the entire year in 2012, they only have to set aside 28,800 copies of FFXIII-2 to make up for it.

Yeah, i'm seeing people everywhere on Wutai, at all times of day and night since the patch...this can only be a good thing.

Couple comments that is not 1 month that is 1 yr. Look at the year marking the first records are all 2010, and the last one is 2011.

And that is population of JP Prime.

Total Population is somewhere between 30-50k.

So what your saying neptune, si the 500 players some shells are showing at peak time is the end all of that servers population

cuz 500 x 19 servers = 9500 players
and several servers are showing upwards of 1500 players at peak hours


so right there the population is at least upwards of 15-20k online at peak hours

and we all know online is not total population


basic math and common sense is easy!

Let's wait a few days to see a more detailed analysis before jumping to any conclusions. 10k, 40k, or 50k it's just sad to even be debating the merits of those low of numbers. Lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neptune

Let's wait a few days to see a more detailed analysis before jumping to any conclusions. 10k, 40k, or 50k it's just sad to even be debating the merits of those low of numbers. Lol.

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then dont debate

if the number of people playing a game is that important to you, then obviously your prioties on the definition of what matters and what you enjoy are in the wrong place


the only things that matter

a) do you have the ability to find people to do things with
b) do you see people around often, especialy in the cities and at the main camps that are most in use

Really the population being publicized is only to strengthen the people saying the game is over and better jump ship now.

We all know the population is too low... SE based on their reported losses predicted about 800k subs more in online games then there are.

Why do we need these numbers, it serves no purpose besides slamming SE more. Media starts slamming SE again over it very good shot they will remove them again.