FF14 player count has fallen off a cliff and is now at 2019 levels (3/16/2025)

Remember the last LuckyBancho census?

https://i.ibb.co/nNV12WVt/Untitled.png

Oh how we wished it stopped at the high points of Shadowbringers.

Not only has the game lost all the gains it made from the WoW exodus....

It has now dropped to below 1 million players and to nearly Stormblood territory.

https://i.ibb.co/cS7rqsq2/Untitled.png

There is only ONE quarter where player count is lower, and that's FIVE AND A HALF YEAR AGO in 2019.

Square Enix. By being cautious and risk averse you are taking the BIGGEST RISK FOR THIS GAME.

https://i.ibb.co/ymdmzkfB/1742124061430.png

Oh something that got brought to my attention:

From Dawntrail onwards, the absolute number of new characters is lower than in the Heavensward and Stormblood periods, when the overall number of characters achieved was lower.

--------------------------------------------------------

http://blog.livedoor.jp/umadori0726/.../62221080.html

JP sentiment:

1. "Are all those Archer bots included too?"
2. "83 out of 99 are ‘golden characters,’ so that means there aren’t many new players at all. Is the negative reputation campaign working better than expected?"
3. "Is the 3% completion rate for Eden lower or higher compared to past Ultimate raids? Someone knowledgeable, please explain."
4. "The numbers went down, and that’s hilarious."
5. "If the active player count only dropped by 1%, why did the number of continuing characters from the last survey drop by nearly 10%? What’s going on?"
6. ">>1 Do bots even pay for subscriptions? Without a subscription, they can’t go past level 71, right?"
7. "You guys always say, ‘If you don’t like it, quit!’ Well, congrats, people actually did."
8. "Heading straight for a population decline."
9. "So before COVID, the player base was stable at around 600,000, and then it suddenly doubled? The COVID boom was insane."
10. "I bet they’re desperately inflating these numbers somehow."
11. "If they didn't count bots, the actual number would probably be much lower."
12. "The golden ratio is way too high, showing that almost no new players are coming in."
13. "Even during COVID, the game wasn't that exciting for me. Once restrictions lifted, I quit immediately."
14. "The fact that the golden characters keep increasing while the total active player count stays about the same shows a problem."
15. "The trend is pretty clear: fewer new players, old players sticking around, but some are slowly leaving."
16. "Bot activity inflates the numbers so much that it’s impossible to know how many real players are left."
17. "Are there really only 990,000 active characters left? That number seems so fake."
18. "Looking at past data, it's clear that the population peaked during COVID and is now in decline."
19. "They should really do something about these bots. It’s annoying seeing them everywhere."
20. "I’m surprised it’s still at 990,000. I expected it to drop below 900,000 by now."
21. "FF14 is still in a better position than most other MMOs, but they need to think about player retention."
22. "I'm still having fun, but I can definitely feel the decline."
23. "Most of my friends have already quit. I only log in for the story patches."
24. "The extreme lack of new players means the community is getting stale."
25. "All my free company members have stopped playing, so I just solo now."
26. "If the devs don't introduce new incentives, this game is going to enter a slow decline."
27. "This game used to feel fresh. Now, it just feels like a chore."
28. "I still enjoy raiding, but everything else feels like filler content."
29. "I was excited for this patch, but it doesn’t seem like it changed much."
30. "New content needs to be more engaging if they want people to stick around."
31. "They should stop catering so much to casual players and give hardcore players more challenges."
32. "Another ultimate raid was nice, but I think people are getting burned out."
33. "The game needs something fresh, not just another ultimate or savage tier."
34. "At this rate, I don’t think the next expansion will bring in many new players."
35. "FF14 still has a lot of potential, but they need to innovate."
36. "Even if player numbers are stable, engagement levels seem to be dropping."
37. "I wonder if the devs are aware of how many people are getting tired of the formula."
38. "I still log in daily, but only because I have nothing else to play."
39. "How long can they keep relying on nostalgia and the story to keep people invested?"
40. "I used to think FF14 was unbeatable, but now I’m not so sure."
41. "They need to speed up content delivery. Waiting so long between updates is painful."
42. "A lot of people I know are moving to other games. The competition is getting stronger."
43. "It’s not just about the numbers—player sentiment is also getting worse."
44. "I keep seeing new gacha games pulling away FF14 players."
45. "MMOs in general are in a rough spot, not just FF14."
46. "The devs need to stop ignoring feedback if they want this game to last another 10 years."
47. "A lot of my friends switched to playing single-player RPGs instead of MMOs."
48. "If they don’t shake things up soon, it’s going to be a slow death."
49. "I don’t see myself playing this game much longer unless something major changes."
50. "FF14 is still my favorite MMO, but I’m starting to feel less attached to it."
51. "I wonder how many people are only staying because they feel obligated rather than because they enjoy it."

We have to go LOWER! LOWEEEEEEEEEER!!

Deserves to go back to 1.0 imho

Yoshi needs to go, CBu3 Needs to go . . Both are Actively poisoning the game, We need monthly updates the dripfeeding ain't it.

And if 7.2 drops the Numbers go up again, like always in the x.0 - x.2 time, i mean i really hope the playerbase stays so low in the hope it changes something but sadly i know exactly it wont change anything at all

That's not a problem, they're just playing other games, they will come back when they feel like it. Everything is going according to the plan.

I think the general trend will be that we end up conforming to Shadowbringers numbers for this expansion, once some people return to try out the new exploratory, but I do think in 8.x series, we will see it drop to Stormblood figures pretty consistently, when people come to realize that it's just the same thing they've been doing.

and I just can't see them managing to capture people the same way they did with something like ShB, between the story and the general surprise that we were not going to Garlemald, but an entirely different reflection, or something like Endwalker when it was meant to serve as a conclusion to a really long, and fairly satisfying story.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

And if 7.2 drops the Numbers go up again, like always in the x.0 - x.2 time, i mean i really hope the playerbase stays so low in the hope it changes something but sadly i know exactly it wont change anything at all

---

This is the correct answer.
Players will bounce between games and come back to those where they have invested a considerable amount of time when patches are cycled through.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I think the general trend will be that we end up conforming to Shadowbringers numbers for this expansion, once some people return to try out the new exploratory, but I do think in 8.x series, we will see it drop to Stormblood figures pretty consistently, when people come to realize that it's just the same thing they've been doing.

and I just can't see them managing to capture people the same way they did with something like ShB, between the story and the general surprise that we were not going to Garlemald, but an entirely different reflection, or something like Endwalker when it was meant to serve as a conclusion to a really long, and fairly satisfying story.

---

They can get playercount back up if they just Tsukiyomi Dawntrail and Endwalker, Awaken the player a few years after the 4th warden was defeated. Scions gone, Gra'ha only one that stayed.


Everything that happened in Dawntrail and Endwalker was just visions fed into your comatose mind by the light.
Lifes good, Zodiark is back, Empire is back, Ascians are present, Scions are gone no quick solutions, ETC

Strand the Warrior in Novrandt, Must explore other reflections to return home, Do not allow CBu3 Or Yoshi to immediately push Scions.

Rename the Endwalker and Yawntrail zones to "Dreamscape (Name)" Everyone within is slightly transparent now or add the FFX Farplane soul visuals to constantly be floating nearby NPCS.

Crisis Adverted, Bad writing removed, Victory.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by weebtext

We have to go LOWER! LOWEEEEEEEEEER!!

---

Unironically yes. Seems money is the only thing they will listen to at this phase, judging by the last live letter.

I am not surprised. Back in the Day we got 2-3 Dungeons per Patch and not just one. We also had shorter Development cycles than we have now. We get less content in longer Development cycles. Doesn't make any sense right?

Also the quality of the content suffered a lot. Events are now 2 minute talking quests. Go back a Few years and we had small, fun, mini dungeons for several events like the Halloween event or even the valentines Day event. To much Ressources are wasted on Ultimates which people use forbidden plugins or Boost services to clear.

The normal player gets literally nothing except one dungeon each larger patch.

PvP got turned into a boring Chore people only play till they have their rewards, jobs leveled up or to stomp randoms in premades and relish in their misery.
Unique Rewards, be it pve or pvp, no longer exist cause some first world feelings could get hurt.

I hope it drops further so Squeenix wakes up or just end Service of the damn thing.

Whether people want to hear it or not, this really is the consequence of a lackluster MSQ. The longer patch cycles are rough, but when there's no hype for the MSQ the is shocking lacking in new casual content.

The new field op comes out in 7.25. In May. Before that would have people grumbling but at least they could look forward to the next chapter of their beloved story, and that would at least tide them over. Right now, I'm not even sure how many people count the MSQ as viable content. I sure don't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Araxes

I am not surprised. Back in the Day we got 2-3 Dungeons per Patch and not just one. We also had shorter Development cycles than we have now. We get less content in longer Development cycles. Doesn't make any sense right?

Also the quality of the content suffered a lot. Events are now 2 minute talking quests. Go back a Few years and we had small, fun, mini dungeons for several events like the Halloween event or even the valentines Day event. To much Ressources are wasted on Ultimates which people use forbidden plugins or Boost services to clear.

The normal player gets literally nothing except one dungeon each larger patch.

PvP got turned into a boring Chore people only play till they have their rewards, jobs leveled up or to stomp randoms in premades and relish in their misery.
Unique Rewards, be it pve or pvp, no longer exist cause some first world feelings could get hurt.

I hope it drops further so Squeenix wakes up or just end Service of the damn thing.

---

Yeah...this game used to be a haven for casual players. I'm not sure whether to blame a vocal minority in hardcore raiders, I don't know whether to blame the CEO change in 2023(?), or a host of other things.

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0 to right ship at this point. That's asking the player base to put up with another year of uninspired story, content, and gameplay, where quantity and quality are hitting Warlords of Draenor levels of bad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Basteala

Whether people want to hear it or not, this really is the consequence of a lackluster MSQ. The longer patch cycles are rough, but when there's no hype for the MSQ the is shocking lacking in new casual content.

The new field op comes out in 7.25. In May. Before that would have people grumbling but at least they could look forward to the next chapter of their beloved story, and that would at least tide them over. Right now, I'm not even sure how many people count the MSQ as viable content. I sure don't.



Yeah...this game used to be a haven for casual players. I'm not sure whether to blame a vocal minority in hardcore raiders, I don't know whether to blame the CEO change in 2023(?), or a host of other things.

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0 to right ship at this point. That's asking the player base to put up with another year of uninspired story, content, and gameplay, where quantity and quality are hitting Warlords of Draenor levels of bad.

---

Maybe FF NEEDS the current Shadowlands/Warlords like phase to become good again. WoW is having a massive resurgence after they learned their lesson. The Game is up again to something around 7 million "active" players (world wide).

When i started FF shortly before the Heavensward expac, i could barely sleep without thinking of playing again. Now i can barely get myself to come online and step into my house so it doesn't get demolished. I guess Housing demo is saving them subs.
Playing mostly WoW now together with my Wife. Everything goes all day and you have numerous types of content to get max gear, not just one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Araxes

I am not surprised. Back in the Day we got 2-3 Dungeons per Patch and not just one. We also had shorter Development cycles than we have now. We get less content in longer Development cycles. Doesn't make any sense right?

---

A lot of players defended the reduction in dungeons because they believed Yoshi P's lies.

It's honestly very sad. This is what they said back in the day:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sated

If it means more content, I'm happy for it.

Having more variety in my daily EX roulette isn't as important to me as having a wider variety of things to do once I've done my daily EX roulette.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LeoLupinos

I believe Yoshi explained why only one dungeon. It was a valid answer.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

Also... why do we need more dungeons beyond what SE told they are going to give us? Whenever I use DR for my daily reward, I get the same set of dungeons:

50/60/70: KeEpEr Of ThE lAke and The Ghimlyt Dark (2/38 dungeons or 5.2%)
Leveling: Toto-Rak, Doma Castle, Castrum Abania, and Dohn Mheg (4/30 or 13.3%, or 4/27 or 14.8% if you remove the trials)

---

Square Enix figured you can reduce content by promising something vague and unverifiable.

You can promise that by reducing the dungeons, you can focus on "quality". But what is quality? How would we know when they promise was made real? No one knows. So they can reduce and not actually give anything in return.

Needs to go down to ARR levels.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Araxes

Maybe FF NEEDS the current Shadowlands/Warlords like phase to become good again. WoW is having a massive resurgence after they learned their lesson. The Game is up again to something around 7 million "active" players (world wide).

When i started FF shortly before the Heavensward expac, i could barely sleep without thinking of playing again. Now i can barely get myself to come online and step into my house so it doesn't get demolished. I guess Housing demo is saving them subs.
Playing mostly WoW now together with my Wife. Everything goes all day and you have numerous types of content to get max gear, not just one.

---

I hate to say it, but you're probably right. The trouble is I'm not sure if FF14 is big enough to survive that and have a resurgence. Especially with SE's CEO being who they are, it's every bit more likely that the game gets downgraded to a F2P shell of its former self.

We lost most of the people who came from WoW. We lost many veterans and casuals who were here before. The development team is only taking the blame for messing up the MSQ, and instead blames the playerbase for every other major problem the game has — at least in the rare cases where the devs acknowledge such problems exist.

And for those coping that 7.2 will save FFXIV: getting lower highs and lower lows is not a good thing. It's called a downtrend.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Basteala

Yoshi P and the team need to do something, though. Drastic. And soon. I don't think you can wait until 8.0

---

Drastic? As in ... what? Closing the game down and spending upwards of six years creating a new one? You do realize that the storyline, artwork, quests and gameplay design are moving from pre-production to production for the rest of Dreamwalker, right? Aside from adjustments, there will be no major earth-shaking changes to anything in-game until the next expansion. That's how expansions work.

From the OP's perspective: Since when is 1 million active players considered a failure? When is Operating Income (aka Profits) of 17.3 billion yen [FY2025/Q1-Q3, Q4 ends in two weeks] considered a failure?

More importantly, since when did the LuckyBancho census indicate "total number of paying subscribers"?

not gonna lie bad msq and the woke community is mostly killing me I never have felt a game that protect lies and BS so those kind of people don't leave

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DPZ2

Drastic? As in ... what? Closing the game down and spending upwards of six years creating a new one? You do realize that the storyline, artwork, quests and gameplay design are moving from pre-production to production for the rest of Dreamwalker, right? Aside from adjustments, there will be no major earth-shaking changes to anything in-game until the next expansion. That's how expansions work.

From the OP's perspective: Since when is 1 million active players considered a failure? When is Operating Income (aka Profits) of 17.3 billion yen [FY2025/Q1-Q3, Q4 ends in two weeks] considered a failure?

More importantly, since when did the LuckyBancho census indicate "total number of paying subscribers"?

---

The goalposts will keep moving until morale improves!

Sure 7.2 will see a boost in players but lets not pretend that damage hasn't been done already.

Frankly I want to see the playerbase fall further until the devs actually start to listen to feedback. (which will likely be at 0 players at this rate).

Monetarily, you may not consider 1mln subscribers as a failure.

But you also shouldn't be considering a game on a downward trajectory as a successful thing either. All it takes is for that trajectory to hit a threshold that they are not happy with before you start seeing more monetization in the game and ideas, e.g., more subscription tiers, that offer more than just additional retainers or character space per server, more cosmetic items on MogStation, more mounts which would've been suited better as in-game rewards (e.g., Shadow Wolf), and so on.

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

it has the same active player numbers that wow has and wow just dropped a big patch while ff14 is still on a draught

i think they are very successfull with what they are doing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DPZ2

Drastic? As in ... what? Closing the game down and spending upwards of six years creating a new one? You do realize that the storyline, artwork, quests and gameplay design are moving from pre-production to production for the rest of Dreamwalker, right? Aside from adjustments, there will be no major earth-shaking changes to anything in-game until the next expansion. That's how expansions work.

From the OP's perspective: Since when is 1 million active players considered a failure? When is Operating Income (aka Profits) of 17.3 billion yen [FY2025/Q1-Q3, Q4 ends in two weeks] considered a failure?

More importantly, since when did the LuckyBancho census indicate "total number of paying subscribers"?

---

Study finance a bit more, and you'll find the answers to your questions. Why wait for a company to go bankrupt to call it a failure? The sooner a downtrend is identified, the better. FFXIV is in a downtrend, just like SE's earnings. Are you aware that the 17 billion number was much higher before?

What truly matters at the end of the day is whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing over time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

it has the same active player numbers that wow has and wow just dropped a big patch while ff14 is still on a draught

i think they are very successfull with what they are doing

---

Not sure where you're getting those numbers from.
Granted neither Blizzard nor SE publish their numbers officially so even Luckybancho is just an estimate.

But any cursory search for WoW's player numbers seems to be sitting somewhere between 7-8 million monthly and anywhere between 200-700k daily unique active players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fagotura

It has now dropped to below 1 million players and to nearly Stormblood territory.

---

That means we get Stormblood quality content soon, right? RIGHT? o.o

Can we get much lower? (So low)
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh-oh, oh

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaurhz

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

---

Definitely. It also just seems that Yoshi P does not understand what exactly the discontent is about. He has repeatedly said that he is confused by the reception and when asked about longstanding issues answered something completely orthogonal to what players are actually concerned about.

I think they are self aware that they legitimately do not know how to fix the sinking boat. So if they've already mentally given up, why bother fixing it? Just try to cash out and recoup as much of the sunk cost as possible.

Ohhh, i am sure, that they will try to fix it. Because if they don't then SQEX is over. FF14 carries the whole company. If the game dies then SQEX dies too.

But it seems, that the current devs do not even know how and why the game works. It is like, that they memorized some things but they do not know the reasons why the things are like they are. And this is the reason why the game is so formulaic. They just copy&paste things from ShB for the third time and they wonder why the people are not happy with it. They cannot figure it out why things, which worked in the past do not work now. Blizzard has made this error too. But they listened and they changed thing massively. It will be interesting whether SQEX can also make such changes or not.


Cheers

Something got brought up to my attention:

From Dawntrail onwards, the absolute number of new characters is lower than in the Heavensward and Stormblood periods, when the overall number of characters achieved was lower.

It seems like their corporate strategy of constantly attracting new players, churning through players so that getting bored by the absolute dearth of content is not a concern since there's always fresh blood to replace the old... that seems to be finally coming to an end, in the sense that it no longer works.

They have taken the veterans for granted to chase the imaginary "young", "modern" gamer out there, but outside the WoW exodus that strategy hasn't succeeded. Especially when the MSQ is tediously long and is conveyed in an extremely outdated format.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fagotura

Something got brought up to my attention:

From Dawntrail onwards, the absolute number of new characters is lower than in the Heavensward and Stormblood periods, when the overall number of characters achieved was lower.

It seems like their corporate strategy of constantly attracting new players, churning through players so that getting bored by the absolute dearth of content is not a concern since there's always fresh blood to replace the old... that seems to be finally coming to an end, in the sense that it no longer works.

They have taken the veterans for granted to chase the imaginary "young", "modern" gamer out there, but outside the WoW exodus that strategy hasn't succeeded. Especially when the MSQ is tediously long and is conveyed in an extremely outdated format.

---

Square always seems to focus on particular elements that in a vacuum seem to be “smart” but ignore massive conflicting elements that make the decision stupid

The “make everything easy for the hip new gamer with the attention span of an average tiktok addict” may not be a terrible strategy…….if you didn’t have to slog through 200 hours of MSQ. The whole “fix the lack of healers by making them easy so they aren’t scary” may not be terrible but……..MMO players will never not blame healers for everything even if it isn’t their fault

They never seem to look holistically at a problem they are trying to tackle

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by weebtext

We have to go LOWER! LOWEEEEEEEEEER!!

---

I can't believe I'm saying this, but we need to convince all the international players to unsub for awhile; that is the only thing SE will respond to.

We fought back as hard as we all could, and did not work.

Fine then.

Let's see how they react when they start losing their ill-gotten money.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The “make everything easy for the hip new gamer with the attention span of an average tiktok addict” may not be a terrible strategy……

---

For real, I literally can't get anyone IRL to play this game. They all get bored in ARR and quit by level 30 or something. Getting them into Helldivers 2 was not even remotely close to difficult on the other hand lmao.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Monetarily, you may not consider 1mln subscribers as a failure.

But you also shouldn't be considering a game on a downward trajectory as a successful thing either. All it takes is for that trajectory to hit a threshold that they are not happy with before you start seeing more monetization in the game and ideas, e.g., more subscription tiers, that offer more than just additional retainers or character space per server, more cosmetic items on MogStation, more mounts which would've been suited better as in-game rewards (e.g., Shadow Wolf), and so on.

As I do honestly think they would flirt around with this ideas far sooner than they would consider turning the patch cycle and predictability on its head.

---

If that ever happened that just proves what everyone thought about CS3 & upper management for awhile now, and it just make more players back off from this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hallarem

Unironically yes. Seems money is the only thing they will listen to at this phase, judging by the last live letter.

---

Oh don't worry, I wasn't being ironic. I genuinely want the player count to sink lower and lower, below SB, below HW, below ARR. I'm so far past dooming I just want to see this game crash and burn.

As much as I would love to see the game get better, I don't have much hope for that happening. Might as well enjoy the shitshow!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fagotura

For real, I literally can't get anyone IRL to play this game. They all get bored in ARR and quit by level 30 or something. Getting them into Helldivers 2 was not even remotely close to difficult on the other hand lmao.

---

MMO's were always a time investment on a much bigger scale.
And that's also why they are also a niché that older generations are covering, since they have grown up with this genre.

"Your burnt out.
If your unhappy:
Take a break.
And I mean this in the most patronising way possible, maybe the game is just not for you, and 'that's O. K.' (smiley face)

Now let me get back to what works for me."

(oh sht I probably need to be explicit ^^sarcasm^^ , that's sarcasm.)

I want to like the game but there is nothing for me to do. I did the story, did all zone questlines, did all trial and raid storylines, did most job stories, did the rolequests, did Blue Mage up through level 70, finished Eureka and Bozja, did variant dungeons, leveled gatherers to cap and did questlines, etc. There is nothing meaningful to do. Every now and then I dabble in savage or chaotic and then remember that I don't want to wipe 60 times until everyone perfects the dance so we finally clear once and then have to do it dozens of more times after that to get an ilevel upgrade that you will get for free in a few months anyway or some cosmetic. I can't be bothered to grind all of the jobs to cap when I don't main them just for the sake of grind. I would have liked to have progressed through more field exploration zones as a samurai main but it seems we are only getting two. There is just very little longevity. My friends don't play FF14 - tried getting them into it - so I don't have any reason to go back and do old content with them. Not that I would be able to before they are 200+ hours in and reach Eureka given that the story is a singleplayer experience.

I have been playing WoW on and off over the years. It is in a similar position to FF14 where there is not much longevity, and if you are a long time player who has done everything then there just isn't much to do besides do the same fights but harder over and over for an ilevel increase or PvPing until you get bored.

That ought to have an effect on the direction of the game. But even if it does it will probably take quite some months for anything significant to materialize.

The game being extremely formulaic is probably a result of highly rigid project planning and they are probably already deep into producing content that 6 month to a year away, which they can't change drastically.

It'll be interesting to see what easier smaller improvement they manage to make in the short and medium term. I bet the small announced QoL features such as increased runspeed in cities or being able to mount up while running are a result of them trying to come up with improvements that they can do right now.

I've been a new player for two weeks, and so far, I'm really enjoying FFXIV.

I hope it stays that way and I don't move somewhere else like others.

I came from ESO, GW2, and LotRO, which I still play. But for the past two weeks, there hasn't been any other game for me but FFXIV.

I get up, check the app for sales, and I feel like I browse Lodestone every day. In the evening, after the kids are asleep, I log in and have fun and enjoy the story.

I've been playing FFXIV every day for two weeks. It's been a long time since I was this addicted by a game.

Just to show you that there aren't just fleeing players. ;)

Aside from cities, I haven't seen a single other soul on my server in the last 24h.

ARR Zones, HW Zones, Stormblood Zones, Shadowbringer & Endwalker zones i've been gathering nonstop today and not one encounter. At what point is a server considered dead enough to fuse? Halicarnassus is empty af. Their server push failed, Merge the new ones into Seraph.