Over 10 million players worldwide but...

[Tridus]

The website you reference is known for being rather inaccurate in its numbers, plus the idea that you're only active if you've claimed a certain mount in the story is a rather arbitrary cutoff point, there are play who do play the game who really don't care about the story and progress it only enough to gather and craft in the new zones (which you can completely do without claiming the Vol mount).

While I'm sure those people exist, progressing the MSQ past a certain point has been a pretty steady cutoff for that site, making the numbers over time comparable. It's also the best number we have, since SE gives out nothing of any value whatsoever in that department.

[Metalwrath]

And yet Alliance roulette doesn't have any problems. All the old raids are easy nowadays. Even going back to Deltascape with 340ish gear, you'll smoke everything. Alex? It's an utter joke. Personally, I beg for Weeping City and Dun Scaith whenever I do Alliance because I'm sick to death of Braindead of the Ancients.

Alliance roulette does have Issues.People regularly instant leave when they see Dun Sciath pop.Raubanestre if there is one wipe you get several attempts to vote abondon.
A lot of players who go to Alex now struggle with things like tank swapping or dealing with some of the mechanics like turning gorilla to clear bombs or useing the gobwalker.
While it may be easy for experience players its not as easy for new players and this is why experienced players especially mentors bail ASAP.

[Zojha]

Probably a big indication here, but how many of these people are on a 8:30am EST on a Tuesday running O1N and not getting ready to go to work or school???

Uhm... minor note here: If the server of her 'main' is any indication (Ragnarok, an EU server), it was actually 14.24, or 2.24 PM on her clock (Local time is displayed). In my country, most schools end at around 13.30 depending on how the schedule is set up. Not quite primetime, but not quite dead either - Especially for a datacenter that just recently-ish got new servers to deal with overpopulation.

[Rita1989]

Uhm... minor note here: If the server of her 'main' is any indication (Ragnarok, an EU server), it was actually 14.24, or 2.24 PM on her clock (Local time is displayed). In my country, most schools end at around 13.30 depending on how the schedule is set up. Not quite primetime, but not quite dead either - Especially for a datacenter that just recently-ish got new servers to deal with overpopulation.

It's a problem on any Data Centre I queued for O1N on an alt during EST prime time, Had to afk and came back 2 hours later to see I was still in queue its a serious problem that SE doesn't want to address by creating a new roulette or just adding them to the regular trial roulette.

[Riardon]

It also depends on what hour you queued and what content for.
Not everyone wants to run the same things. And older dungeons are really hard to get into cause nobody does them.
If you play during rush hour its way easier to get into everything.
If you play during morning when everyone is at work and school then queue takes triple time at least.

[Malzian]

Uhm... minor note here: If the server of her 'main' is any indication (Ragnarok, an EU server), it was actually 14.24, or 2.24 PM on her clock (Local time is displayed). In my country, most schools end at around 13.30 depending on how the schedule is set up. Not quite primetime, but not quite dead either - Especially for a datacenter that just recently-ish got new servers to deal with overpopulation.

Noted on the time-zone difference. I didn't have access to check which servers are on which DCs at the time I made the post. Still, most of the numbers will be the same if you consider that the total registered EU count is roughly the same as half the registered NA accounts, the calculations would be about the same with 1 correction... I noted in the original Screenshot that they were waiting on a tank, and the final number I came to included both healers and tanks so it's actually half that number or 270k players on tanks as an estimate. On outdated content outside of prime-time hours, you shouldn't expect to be able to get into content quick. I tried as a tank to help a friend that's a DPS get through O1S during prime-time NA hours and we still ended up waiting about 40 minutes on the queue.

[Vahlnir]

They like to praise their total account numbers to high heaven (and make it look like it's active subs) but the truth is there isn't anywhere near 10 million players actively playing. Under a million at most. And like others have said, that's Deltascape. Sigmascape is where it's at right now, so the queue times for Delta are going to be much higher.

[h0tNstilettos]

10 million players may have played the game but 9.5 million of them have quit.

(Looking at lodestone sweep data at least)

There's a reason so many people say this game has a huge player retention problem. Because even if so many players come and try. Not that many actually stick around. The game really isn't that good.

Most of my friends only really stay subbed just so we can joke around together. When we ain't playing together we basically don't play cos the game itself isn't that great

I get tired of people that say this same tired trope. That half a million Lodestone sweep was for those that were up to a certain point in the story at the time the Lodestone sweep was done. There are far more people that do not have story caught up to that point than those that do. This includes not only new and returning players, but even players that either don't get caught up on the story until the end of the current patch cycle such as myself or even multiple patch cycles for people that don't care about the story. Back in HW I went 2 or 3 patches without touching story or doing combat gear treadmill because I was enjoying myself so much with other things like gathering and filling out fishing log, collecting tt cards, leveling my weaver, beast tribe progress, etc. This isn't rare by the way. Active is most likely around 4 million give or take.

[Oriens]

This is what happens when your model is plan and develop content for 12-18 months for it to be outdated and unattractive after 3-6 months.

[AnimaAnimus]

Just omit Coil from the roulette or nerf them. While nice, Coil doesn't have any real value anymore except story. Deltascape, meanwhile, is required to unlock Sigmascape. If there were a raid roulette, this would help queue times immensely.

Neither does Alexander. On that note neither does crystal tower or the void ark series, but they put them in a roulette, even added rabanastry to it and they will be required to unlock the next tier I am willing to bet.

They just wont do it because they know coil is beyond some people's skill set, even with a 130 ilvl and the echo. The people who want to tap buttons or not be bothered to pay attn. would swarm and cry and demand nerfs making them put time into content they forgot about long ago. This ppl wont complain to loudly about. So, the playerbase just has to deal with the bed it made itself.