Will SE pull a blizzard?

[Ryel]

As much as high end raiders seem to deny it, the 24-man alliance raids are still considered raid content, and World of Darkness just happens to be one of them.
Though, I can already assume that you'll reply with "WoD wasn't a raid" so I'm not sure why I'm even bothering.

Sorry, but it's still a 5 month gap.

While 24 man raids may be named as such in their classification, they do not fulfill the same role in the content hierarchy as the 8 man raids do. Sure they may be called "raid content" but their ilvl rewards and difficulty do not provide progression on the content ladder which is what remained stagnant up until the expansion release.

If I remember correctly, the gap between first coil and second coil and the gap between second coil and final coil was roughly 6 months.(feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) 2 extra months for an expension doesn't seem so long putting it that way.

To many players the fact that raids are released every 6 months but are usually cleared in less than a quarter of the time is already seen as an issue, catch up patches and 24 man content does very little to entice players who are already at the higher ends of the game as by that point many of them are gearing alternate classes through the same raid that they did for their primary.

An extra 2 months for a playerbase that has been bored for 3 is still a long time.

EDIT: To add to the poster above, you'd also have to take into account that Heavensward was hit with an unexpected 1 month delay.
If it hadn't, that'd have made the months between Coil content almost roughly the same as the time between SCoB and FCoB.

I did take this into account and if we go further and account for the delay to 3.1 as well as diadem's quick content decay this means that from 2.4-3.2 we saw what was effectively two 8-man raid releases in well over a 14 month period, something that sounds suspiciously close to the same issue players had raised with Blizzard.

[Nezerius]

While 24 man raids may be named as such in their classification, they do not fulfill the same role in the content hierarchy as the 8 man raids do. Sure they may be called "raid content" but their ilvl rewards and difficulty do not provide progression on the content ladder which is what remained stagnant up until the expansion release.

To many players the fact that raids are released every 6 months but are usually cleared in less than a quarter of the time is already seen as an issue, catch up patches and 24 man content does very little to entice players who are already at the higher ends of the game as by that point many of them are gearing alternate classes through the same raid that they did for their primary.

An extra 2 months for a playerbase that has been bored for 3 is still a long time.

It could be argued that the 24-man raids help raiders with a few extra pieces of gear to further progress in the current 8-man raid, since it's the minority that clears the 8-man raid in less than a quarter of it's lifespan.
That said, high end raiders are a small minority to begin with, so that part getting bored doesn't necessarily mean that half the playerbase will drop the game.

I did take this into account and if we go further and account for the delay to 3.1 as well as diadem's quick content decay this means that from 2.4-3.2 we saw what was effectively two 8-man raid releases in well over a 14 month period, something that sounds suspiciously close to the same issue players had raised with Blizzard.

Perhaps raidwise, but unlike Blizzard, SE doesn't completely focus on hardcore raid content tailored towards a small minority, and has released other content in that 14 month timeframe of yours.

[Ryel]

It could be argued that the 24-man raids help raiders with a few extra pieces of gear to further progress in the current 8-man raid, since it's the minority that clears the 8-man raid in less than a quarter of it's lifespan.
That said, high end raiders are a small minority to begin with, so that part getting bored doesn't necessarily mean that half the playerbase will drop the game.

It's not my intention to turn this into a doom and gloom thread so I'll try to keep this part short.

There's a major flaw in trying to compare subscription losses between WoW and FFXIV, while XIV certainly isnt going to drop half it's player-base over a patch or two it also did not have the nearly 10 year period of growth and success that WoW has had.

As much as many players loved WoW over the years the reality is that they very well can afford to lose massive numbers of players over the course of time (though as a business blizzard certainly doesn't want to) as by MMO standards the game is getting on in years and Blizzard is working on other projects.

Every unofficial census that has been posted to these forums has shown a significant drop-off in player numbers with each consecutive patch delay or period of downtime (the last being around 3.1 if i recall), additionally the current endgame scene is no where near as active as it was during the ARR period and less players are returning after unsubscribing each patch.

However you will never see the same sort of subscription dropoff in XIV as WoW no matter how long the content dries up between patches if for no other reason than the fact that FFXIV's numbers have yet to reach WoW's in it's prime so it's not an apt comparison to make.

Perhaps raidwise, but unlike Blizzard, SE doesn't completely focus on hardcore raid content tailored towards a small minority, and has released other content in that 14 month time frame of yours.

The issue is not the release of content itself but content with enough staying power, there's a 31 page debate on this very topic on the front page of this sub-forum if you haven't taken a look at it i suggest you give it a read as it's far from the first one posted.

[TankHunter678]

There's a major flaw in trying to compare subscription losses between WoW and FFXIV, while XIV certainly isnt going to drop half it's player-base over a patch or two it also did not have the nearly 10 year period of growth and success that WoW has had.

As much as many players loved WoW over the years the reality is that they very well can afford to lose massive numbers of players over the course of time (though as a business blizzard certainly doesn't want to) as by MMO standards the game is getting on in years and Blizzard is working on other projects.

Blizzard did not lose subscribers because it is 10 years old. The reason that Blizzard is losing subscribers, losing 5 million subscribers in only 3 months into Warlords of Draenor and driving blizzard to release a game time token you can buy from other players for gold to stabilize the bleeding, was a massive drop in the quality of the content they put out and the long droughts between content releases. After making the game raid or die and swinging between extremes with knee jerk reactionary expansions. As well as a shift towards trying to shove out an expansion every year, which leads to them heavily cutting promised content from the expansion to get it out faster, in addition to them heavily simplifying the game because they sell character boosts with every expansion.

In WoW either you raid... or you wait till the next expac for more dungeon/world content. Which is going to be 14-18 months away.

Despite the fact that Blizzards WoW team is considerably larger then SE's FFXIV team it takes them considerably longer to make content.

[Ryel]

Blizzard did not lose subscribers because it is 10 years old.

I don't recall saying this.

In fact in the very post you quoted I don't see myself even listing a specific reason for the subscription drops in WoW at all, other posters have alluded to them instead.

What i did say is that WoW can afford to lose massive numbers of subs even if Blizzard as a company would prefer they didn't because the game has had roughly 10 years of growth and as it is 10 years is also a long time for an MMO to survive, especially for a company that is working on other projects.

[MerleSirlos]

To many players the fact that raids are released every 6 months but are usually cleared in less than a quarter of the time is already seen as an issue, catch up patches and 24 man content does very little to entice players who are already at the higher ends of the game as by that point many of them are gearing alternate classes through the same raid that they did for their primary.

An extra 2 months for a playerbase that has been bored for 3 is still a long time.

This is then a completly different problem. The focus of the discussion was dry content on a long gap between last patch and first patch of the following extension. Which is not true. If the content added doesn't suit your taste you cannot complain there is no content. (but you can complain you don't like it.)

And now we are moving the discussion to the time lenght between two high end raids. 6 months might be too long for players like you who finish a raid tier in a month or two, farm it for the following month and are left with nothing to do for 3 months. But for players like me who finish it maybe one week or two before the next raid tier arrives, it's totally fine, it suits my pace. (don't take this personally, I don't know how you play, this is just an exemple to illustrate the situation.)

So which kind of player should the game support more? Obviously the majority, or else the game sinks. the game is a mmo with a lot of different kind of players (that the community liikes to categorize in harcore, midcore and casuals but meh). the content might be too much for some, not enough for others, but the game needs to find a balance where the majority is ok with. If you try to move this balance (for exemple by making more hardcore content which will lead to less midcore and/or casual content) then you are pretty much asking for the game to die.

Square Enix decided to go for a 3 months gap between major patches and high end raid tier every two major patch. that's the pace they decided would be balanced for the majority of players they were aiming for. It's up to the players that are on each extreme to adapt their pace to the game's pace. if it's too fast, you either skip some content or stay behind, if it's too slow, do other content or play something else. In the end it's up to each player to decide how they want to manage their time in the game taking patch content pace into consideration.

[Ryel]

This is then a completly different problem. The focus of the discussion was dry content on a long gap between last patch and first patch of the following extension. Which is not true. If the content added doesn't suit your taste you cannot complain there is no content. (but you can complain you don't like it.)

And now we are moving the discussion to the time lenght between two high end raids. 6 months might be too long for players like you who finish a raid tier in a month or two, farm it for the following month and are left with nothing to do for 3 months. But for players like me who finish it maybe one week or two before the next raid tier arrives, it's totally fine, it suits my pace. (don't take this personally, I don't know how you play, this is just an exemple to illustrate the situation.)

Except the question that started the thread was in concern to content gaps leading up to the expansion.

If the same content schedule follows suit up to the next expansion we will go through a very similar content drought to the period between 2.5 - 3.0 because of where it falls on the patch schedule. There was a very large gap in content for any player that remained current in content, there is even a poster saying they were thankful for the break because they were able to play other games the opposite of what a subscription based MMO relies on to make it's revenue.

So which kind of player should the game support more? Obviously the majority, or else the game sinks. the game is a mmo with a lot of different kind of players (that the community liikes to categorize in harcore, midcore and casuals but meh). the content might be too much for some, not enough for others, but the game needs to find a balance where the majority is ok with. If you try to move this balance (for exemple by making more hardcore content which will lead to less midcore and/or casual content) then you are pretty much asking for the game to die.

Square Enix decided to go for a 3 months gap between major patches and high end raid tier every two major patch. that's the pace they decided would be balanced for the majority of players they were aiming for. It's up to the players that are on each extreme to adapt their pace to the game's pace. if it's too fast, you either skip some content or stay behind, if it's too slow, do other content or play something else. In the end it's up to each player to decide how they want to manage their time in the game taking patch content pace into consideration.

This is a debate for another thread, my initial comment was to illustrate the drought timeline and express that It would be against SE's best interest to have a similar content drought as so far unofficial records have shown a drop in player subscriptions after each occurrence. For some reason however players wish to debate this when it has very much been the case regardless of any individual feelings on SE's delivery of content as a whole.

There have been droughts and we have lost players who have not returned during them, therefore in the future it would be best for them to reconsider the types of content they release in the long period leading up to an expansion release.

[kuma_aus]

To many players the fact that raids are released every 6 months but are usually cleared in less than a quarter of the time is already seen as an issue, catch up patches and 24 man content does very little to entice players who are already at the higher ends of the game as by that point many of them are gearing alternate classes through the same raid that they did for their primary.

An extra 2 months for a playerbase that has been bored for 3 is still a long time.

I thought it was common knowledge that raiders make up a minority of the game. I personally think if Yoshida decides to rush the expansion just so Raiders have content to do, it will be an absolute disaster. Sure Yoshida can cater to Raiders and let them have something exciting to do every 3 months, but for the vast majority of players that also enjoy the other things in the game will just straight up leave. If the only thing you care about is raids, then subscribe to the game for the raids and leave afterwards. The vast majority of the game will still enjoy all the other things there is to do in this game as they always have.