I am excited to see what happens when subs kick in.

[Orsnoire]

Don't even need a crystal ball to tell how things go with P2P MMOs. Once free month is over, population nose dives..... then comes server merges and if population keeps dropping further then the announcement for F2P. FFXIV is a fun game but competition is really fierce these days and a lot of other MMO offers same and lot more for free or in buy to play package. So it is goign to be tough time ahead for FFXIV.

PVP isn't going to save this game though, i see a lot of people excited about PVP but the FFXIV combat isn't just suited for that. Anyone remember the failure PVP was in FFXI? housing is a nice addition but other MMOS are already ahead in that department too. So yeah more content is always good but i am not foolish enough to believe that all these features will help in boosting subs because they won't.

Even assuming that the game loses as many subs as SWTOR did (unlikely), the current population numbers are promising for a sustainable future for the game.



Bear in mind that any 1.0 players (not just those who were legacy) have already been billed and have already paid for their sub. Even with that in place, the game is still functioning at or near capacity. That means that not only has the game maintained a near-capacity concurrent login amount even after the first wave of subs, but it suggests that many of the players jaded from their experience in 1.0 (and thereafter quit) have stayed with the game. These players alone are enough to keep the numbers that SE was anticipating.

The only real question that remains is what proportion of players will stay of those who came in to the game with ARR. At this point, it's really hard to make that call. The fact is that nobody really knows, and we won't know for sure until the free month is over for new players.

Bottom line is, you claim that you don't need a crystal ball to tell how things go, and then you proceed to prognosticate using one. By the way, it's clearly broken.