How many people play FFXIV?

[Anonymoose]

good portion of the community SUPPORTED this measure and tried to justify it by saying it was bad for the community that people should know how our server populations are falling.

What (no offense people) moron thought that was a good idea? "Let's just remove world population view and maybe they won't notice the drastic decrease in players!" ... Except for when Gridania and Limsa are abandoned, all remaining players converge on Ul'dah, the wards are empty, all the shouts are in JPN, and only two rival linkshells exist in each language...

[Murugan]

What (no offense people) moron thought that was a good idea? "Let's just remove world population view and maybe they won't notice the drastic decrease in players!" ... Except for when Gridania and Limsa are abandoned, all remaining players converge on Ul'dah, the wards are empty, all the shouts are in JPN, and only two rival linkshells exist in each language...

A world population view never existed. What existed was a truncated area search, which a Japanese player used to create a graph describing the declining population.

The problem was the graph was flawed.

• The person used unverified sampling on many servers from what amounts to random "researchers".
• Failed to get a good sampling of all time zones.
• Observed the population for too short of a period, with limited (and worst of all not even consistent) windows.
  • For example if I did a /sea count on Tuesday every week and you never played on Tuesdays you would not be counted as an active player.
  • Even worse, if I did it at 9pm one Tuesday and then 1 am the next Tuesday after you went to bed my data would show you as "no longer active".

That the population was declining was obvious to everyone, and by attaching these "real numbers" to it people (especially forum trolls) rallied behind it. It (the flawed statistics) became an increasingly distracting issue for the community and so they removed the /sea ability.

They could, and should have instead just struck back at the graph and other spurious claims by pointing out its flaws and releasing more accurate information themselves. However, this was at the point where they were already being forced to admit that FFXIV did not hit its target, were replacing the team, and probably thought this wasn't the conversation they wanted to be having.

There was never an accurate population count released. I for one think that they should release population numbers. They themselves said that they will push towards 2.0 even if no one is playing, I don't see what the harm is in letting us know the total numbers (if not server population) at least until 2.0.

It would either show

• How dedicated they remain to the game despite its low population (which would help the fears of people worried that the game could shut down).
• Growth.

[AmyRae]

There was never an accurate population count released. I for one think that they should release population numbers. They themselves said that they will push towards 2.0 even if no one is playing, I don't see what the harm is in letting us know the total numbers (if not server population) at least until 2.0.

It would either show

• How dedicated they remain to the game despite its low population (which would help the fears of people worried that the game could shut down).
• Growth.

You're forgetting that once subscriptions start, the population is going to shrink drastically. It's inevitable. I'm pretty sure they're not going to want to show you just how badly but you ought to be able to get a rough idea by how quiet Ul'Dah gets.

[Bahn]

You're forgetting that once subscriptions start, the population is going to shrink drastically. It's inevitable. I'm pretty sure they're not going to want to show you just how badly but you ought to be able to get a rough idea by how quiet Ul'Dah gets.

Depends on what they do with the price. Square's still been pretty silent about a reduced price, and yeah, a drop in population is sure to come once it goes P2P. How big of a drop will be determined by what Square does with the P2P matter and how accessible it is to actually get Square to take your money (direct charge vs Click2Buy vs PayPal). Now that the patch notes are in place and there's healthy discussion abound (which I enjoy - these patch notes look like they're going in the right direction, but still need further tweaking) I think a greater portion of players will stick around now that they have a more concrete idea as to what's in store for us.

[AmyRae]

Depends on what they do with the price. Square's still been pretty silent about a reduced price, and yeah, a drop in population is sure to come once it goes P2P. How big of a drop will be determined by what Square does with the P2P matter and how accessible it is to actually get Square to take your money (direct charge vs Click2Buy vs PayPal). Now that the patch notes are in place and there's healthy discussion abound (which I enjoy - these patch notes look like they're going in the right direction, but still need further tweaking) I think a greater portion of players will stick around now that they have a more concrete idea as to what's in store for us.

I'm totally with you on that. I'm not questioning the need for a subscription fee, and I hope the right price will maximize the number of players willing to pay while granting the best amount of revenue. But, no matter the price, a fee is going to see players drop off. Just how many is the question we may never know the answer to.