With WoD in a month, what do you feel will happen in to FF14's population?

[Mahri]

Most of WoW's player turnover happens in Asian regions. NA and EU have declined since Wrath, but not as sharply as the numbers might lead one to believe.

I remember the last WoW graphics 'overhaul'. A few filters and a bit more edge-blurring. The actual characters were just as low poly as they had ever been. Suffice to say, I'm not going to hold my breath that this new one is much different.

Have you even seen screenshots of it?

They've completely redone older character models from scratch, keeping the same general look but with much higher poly counts, redrawn textures, and vastly more sophisticated rigs that allow for a pretty enormous range of animations.

Of course, whether or not you consider it to be a genuine improvement for your character's look is another question entirely. People get picky about aesthetics, and rightly so. Deep down, everyone loves the pretty dress-up doll aspect of MMOs.

[Jaykos]

Updated info. Maybe we don't need to wait for wows expansion to put a dent in FFs subs as its already happening.



Wow aint dead yet.

[Ahmbor]

Updated info. Maybe we don't need to wait for wows expansion to put a dent in FFs subs as its already happening.



Wow aint dead yet.

MoP curve is the same as the cataclysm curve, only in lower...

[Fornix]

Updated info. Maybe we don't need to wait for wows expansion to put a dent in FFs subs as its already happening.



Wow aint dead yet.

WoW most certainly isn't dead yet. However it's following a very similar trend as seen in for example lineage in the years before WoW and after WoW's launch. The rate of decline in WoW's playerbase remains fairly stable. Roughly 2.5 million subscribers per year. At some point it'll smooth out, and Blizzard will probably end up with just putting the game in maintenance mode. But for now I'd expect to see the figures drop to 5 million subscribers by the end of 2015. 3 million subscribers by the end of 2016. And roughly 1.2 million subscribers by the end of 2017. In 2018 and onward the game will probably remain with roughly 300k - 500k remnant players till Blizzard decides to pull the plug.

Due to the sheer size as well as the history of the game there's very little else for Blizzard to actually do with it. Completely revamping the art style to bring it up to current date expectations would be a massive undertaking, with great risk for potentional little reward. Revamping gameplay elements completely and essentially turning it into a WoW 2.0 would just as well be very risky. A major lore-wise overhaul to turn things into a different direction in terms of setting is also very hard. Many players tend to have difficulties accepting such twists.

And there's also very little new players for Blizzard to pull in anymore, as these figures are just the concurrent subscriber rates. The amount of actual unique individuals who's played the game is much greater. And there's little potential new playerbases remaining in the world for Blizzard to thrive upon.

To be frank, I also don't believe it matters too much for Blizzard. The traditional MMO genre which Blizzard greatly helped upon setting on the map of casual gamers, is slowly coming to an end in broader sense anyway. The borders between MMO and multiplayer are fading rapidly due to titles such as Diablo III, Destiny, etc. For oldschool MMO players amongst us, such instanced forms of gameplay without persistent open worlds would never be considered as true MMO's. However for many players it offers just about as much as what they're looking for in a game.

And persistent open worlds in "regular" games will also without question become a standard in the future. With more and more players connected, quite extensive networks in place due to PSN and xbox live, as well as continued revenue being available thanks to the acceptance of DLC, it becomes easier and easier for developers to work with these type of games.

[Ashgarth]

Do you feel that FF14 is up to the challenge of facing down WoW in regards to numbers with the whole new restructure of on how WoW with updated its graphics which is almost comparable to FF14?

[ShiloEET]

Really? SO Wow has NEVER lost subscriptions. Amazing that. I mean I thought it lost 6 million since WOTLK but I must be mistaken.

That would be the subscription number at it's peak. The fact is that the other MMOs on the market. Meaning all of them. Has never had 6 million subscribers at the 10 year mark. So it's like in the end they may have had 12 million subscribers at one point, however their number has never gone down further. Permanent damage means that time loss over long period of time. Not time lost from an expansion pack launching, and an expansion pack's hype ending. Some people didn't really care about the lore anymore after WoTLK. So there's a lot of reasons it has decreased. The point is that there's no way that Final Fantasy XIV is the reason people stop playing WoW. Personal preference or current issues are.

[Edli]

To be frank, I also don't believe it matters too much for Blizzard. The traditional MMO genre which Blizzard greatly helped upon setting on the map of casual gamers, is slowly coming to an end in broader sense anyway. The borders between MMO and multiplayer are fading rapidly due to titles such as Diablo III, Destiny, etc.

You speak of these games like they are some new phenomenon taking over MMOs. We had diablo 1 and 2 before wow even came out and we had a ton of multiplayer shooters ages ago too. There have always been players that played online games but never touched MMOs and players that played both.

You mistake the decline of wow with the decline of MMOs. The decline of WoW is just the decline of a 10 years old game. 10 years, that's a lot for any game. It's only normal for it to only go down over time. Is a pretty big achievement it even held so long and still keeps on going. It will never go back to its golden days because it is an old game, is that simple.

Blizzard knows that and the reason they don't mind is that wow made them a crapton of money over the years, something they couldn't even dreamt of when they launched. The only thing that bothers them is how to replicate that success with another MMO and that's hard. They do these card games on the side and they're cute and all but they're no wow. Diablo 3, doubt people will even remember it in 10 years, same for Destiny.

[Melinabean0]

Yeah, I don't think you can compare their graphics. They are just made differently. WoWs updates to the character models do look good, but it still looks like a cartoon. FFXIV is a bit more realistic. (I said a bit, mind you) That aside, a good chunk of people are not happy about what WoW has done to the classes with the latest patch. My husband being one of them. He fiddled around with his healer until he figured out how to play it with the updates and then joined an instance where everyone was dying because they just didn't know their class anymore. He was on the forums earlier and there were plenty of complaints. But the thing is, some people just like WoW and some people just like FFXIV. The people who prefer whichever game are more likely to stay there, despite being less than thrilled with the changes. There are plenty of people complaining here on the forums that are still playing, people just like to do that.


I seem to be getting a little off track...I suppose what I'm getting at is that, sure, there may be some subscriptions lost while they try it out, but if WoW just isn't their thing they will be back here. Or vice versa. WoW may lose some player base due to the changes, just like FFXIV may lose player base due to changes. It's hard to speculate, really, considering there are many ways a game could lose player base.

[charlemagne]

I'd think it kinda depends how good it is. I've never been a WoW player. If I had been I'd be wary of spending a chunk of cash on an update to a game that is so long in the tooth. I know graphics aren't everything, but in this day and age WoW graphics kinda make me recoil in horror.

[Fornix]

You speak of these games like they are some new phenomenon taking over MMOs. We had diablo 1 and 2 before wow even came out and we had a ton of multiplayer shooters ages ago too. There have always been players that played online games but never touched MMOs and players that played both.

You mistake the decline of wow with the decline of MMOs. The decline of WoW is just the decline of a 10 years old game. 10 years, that's a lot for any game. It's only normal for it to only go down over time. Is a pretty big achievement it even held so long and still keeps on going. It will never go back to its golden days because it is an old game, is that simple.

Blizzard knows that and the reason they don't mind is that wow made them a crapton of money over the years, something they couldn't even dreamt of when they launched. The only thing that bothers them is how to replicate that success with another MMO and that's hard. They do these card games on the side and they're cute and all but they're no wow. Diablo 3, doubt people will even remember it in 10 years, same for Destiny.

Diablo 1 and 2 had traditional lobby based rooms. Whereas Diablo 3 seamlessly places you into a multiplayer game together with other players. Watch_Dogs is another example of where multiplayer and singleplayer can intertwine. Other players can enter your gameplay world without notification, without setting up a multiplayer lobby, etc. Destiny has taken this a step further, where the singleplayer experience and multiplayer experience is shared upon planets, in the tower, etc.

In Unreal, Half-Life, Quake, etc we may have had the opportunity to play multiplayer. However, players did not directly share the same maps.

In the upcoming years this trend will simply increase further and further. You may be playing a regular singleplayer storyline in a game, e.g. Grand Theft Auto VI. And have 50 other players be present in the same city. You may be playing Mass Effect IV, and have other players roam around the planets and spaceships right beside you.

The lines between singleplayer, multiplayer and MMO are fading. Technological advancement has allowed for this. Ten, twenty years from now the term MMO will most probably then also be a thing from the past. Games by default will be expected to be played online. Games by default will be expected to offer room to a great number of players in multiplayer if the theme of the game fits it.

The reduction in start-up MMO development is already greatly noticeable. The number of MMO's being released on yearly bases is diminishing. And the number of newly announced MMO's is diminishing at an even greater pace. Online communities once devoted to covering MMO's more and more are shifting focus towards coverage for games such as Destiny, Tom Clancy's the Division, etc. Simply due to the fact that this style of multiplayer gameplay is what the industry is driving towards more and more. Steering away from the traditional MMO genre. Steering away from the traditional singleplayer and multiplayer experiences.

As a sidenote: Nothing of that has to do with the decline of WoW. And in my post that was also far from what I said.