2.1 coming in Dec, ARR has 1.5+ million accounts

[Eekiki]

I'm more curious as to why it says "multiple" new dungeons will be added. Crystal Tower will be added, but I'm pretty sure additional difficulty levels for pre-existing dungeons don't count as new dungeons :3

Did you play alpha or beta?

If so, do you remember what Tam-Tara was like back then? There's significant portions of that map that we currently never go to, but they're still there. Who's to say hard mode on our current dungeons won't also mean different paths?

[Makeda]

That means nothing if they don't give out retention figures.

Subs is what counts to the accountants.

But to the users what counts is rarely mentioned in public: concurrency.

Concurrency is the number of people simultaneously logged in. Very few MMOs top 100,000 average on this. The highest ever publicized in the west was 450,000 for Guild Wars 2 during their launch week. WoW claims a highest ever of 425,000.

It is hard to say what concurrency is here... Max is 344,000 - something very few MMOs have ever done. More or less, that puts this MMO in the same 'huge in the west' space WoW and GW2 are in. But that was last month. Sales are going insanely strong, so its logical to assume that concurrency has not dipped by much, and might even be stabilizing near that max. Given how many login problems there were at launch, and how sales were frozen when that 344,000 figure was taken, it is even possible that it might have since gone up... (speculation).

[Luvbunny]

1.5 millions registered, probably 1 million active paying for one month, and out of those 1 millions, at least 200k are bots and RMT lol. The game would probably stabilize around 500k-750k paying subscribers, and would fluctuate between new patches. As it is now, a very solid single player FF experience with some online components throw in. Definitely not worth paying $15 bucks month every month every month....

[Abriael]

1* - Stats were released in late September.
2* - No official date has actually been given for 2.1...The only thing that has *ACTUALLY* been said is "by the end of the year". - It's actually speculated and much more likely that the update will come in the next few weeks considering the Playstation 4 kicks off in 2-3 weeks.

I don't know where //any// of you got "2.1 is coming in December"...When in fact, the only guarantee thus far is that 2.1 is coming BY December.

I think you're a bit confused. There's a press release coming directly from Square Enix Japan saying that the patch is scheduled for December.

That's where we got "2.1 is coming in December".

1.5 millions registered, probably 1 million active paying for one month, and out of those 1 millions, at least 200k are bots and RMT lol. The game would probably stabilize around 500k-750k paying subscribers, and would fluctuate between new patches. As it is now, a very solid single player FF experience with some online components throw in. Definitely not worth paying $15 bucks month every month every month....

Mind passing around that good stuff you're drinking?

[Conradus]

Yah Bot accounts are included in that number, and who knows how many of those are there xD.

Free hint: Bot accounts are *also* an indication that the game is healthy and growing. Gold sellers aren't going to create bots in a game where they'll have no one to sell to.

[mindful]

Now can they keep a retention rate of around 47%-50% . That might be there hardest part though. They would need better customer service and So everyone was able to pay for there monthly fees. That would be around 750k users paying a month and that would be impressive. They always said they only needed a avg of 500k paying subscriptions a month to profit. 750k users paying monthly would be a impressive number for a subscription base mmo now days.

[Luvbunny]

Mind passing around that good stuff you're drinking?

LOL, the game will be fine, even with 250k paying subscribers, that would be quite healthy numbers (and more of what they expected originally). I think they did amazing job in creating a very solid package for first timer. You can play it as "offline" FF with a few online components on your first play through. It's when you have to repeat the experience, the game starts to fall apart. By patch 2.5 this game should be solid. It's one of those game that is best to experience for a month or two at a time, take a break for a couple of months and come back whenever they put out their big patch.

[TrickedOutHoro]

Bit further off than I was hoping but that's nice regardless. Excited for new dungeon content.

[Abriael]

LOL, the game will be fine, even with 250k paying subscribers, that would be quite healthy numbers (and more of what they expected originally). I think they did amazing job in creating a very solid package for first timer. You can play it as "offline" FF with a few online components on your first play through. It's when you have to repeat the experience, the game starts to fall apart. By patch 2.5 this game should be solid. It's one of those game that is best to experience for a month or two at a time, take a break for a couple of months and come back whenever they put out their big patch.

I would say the game is solid now. As a matter of fact, more solid than anything else the MMO market offers at the moment. It has flaws here and there, but most of them are apparent only to the vast minority of people that grind for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Which makes them semi-irrelevant.

[TetsuyaHikari]

Did you play alpha or beta?

If so, do you remember what Tam-Tara was like back then? There's significant portions of that map that we currently never go to, but they're still there. Who's to say hard mode on our current dungeons won't also mean different paths?

I've been playing since the PS3 beta started on phase 3. Maybe you're right about opening new paths, but they haven't said anything like that. They simply addressed the different difficulties being added.

Sadly, there are plenty of areas we can't explore in RPGs, despite them existing, because they are simply there for padding.