Quote Originally Posted by Tigercub View Post
500k players is very, very good for an MMO (and actually FFXI broke a million at its peak). You seem to be basing your value of success on WoW. You're right that it is less appealing now, but that's to be expected because it's old and has newer competition. That doesn't mean that the core mechanics of the game are bad or that the game is niche. It's just getting to the end of its expiration date, as everything does.
I remember seeing a gaming magazine back then who claimed FFXI had reached a 5 million players base. But the issue here is that FFXI does not appeal at all to casuals which are the biggest part of the market. As for the hardcore it is something like 30-40%. The game is focused on you spending 1h looking for a party and then grinding 1 type of monster for maybe days to get 5-10 levels. then move to a new area and repeat. The type of gameplay appeals to very few players.