Quote Originally Posted by Ilyrian View Post
Is it? Do we have sub numbers to compare? Because I don't think there's anywhere near a comparison here. Would be interesting to see.
But with respect to FFXIV - it's in no way 'close' to WoW. Successful, but in a different league.
Blizzard doesn't release subscriptions numbers anymore so there's no way to get the real numbers. Even MAUs get lumped together for all their titles unless they're trying to brag of a specific game's success (which has pretty much been Overwatch or Hearthstone for the last couple of years).

They did announce that there were 3.4 million copies of Battle for Azeroth sold on launch day but that's misleading because it included players who pre-purchased months in advance to unlock early access to the Allied races. Some of those players quit the game before the expansion released because they didn't like what they saw once beta testing started or they objected to the level scaling changes when those were introduced a few weeks after the pre-purchase campaign began (hope that $60 to play an Allied race for a couple of months was worth it to them).

Almost everyone on my Battle.net friends list was logging into WoW the first week of Battle for Azeroth. Only 2 are continuing to log in regularly 5 weeks later and most are no longer logging into WoW at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if FFXIV numbers were closing in on WoW but it would be more because of WoW's rapid fall than FFFXIV's rapid rise.

Quote Originally Posted by OurMom View Post
We're not close I dont know why xiv players can't tell the difference between accounts made and active subscribers.
The informal census isn't a great way of knowing the number of active FFXIV players because it's based on obtaining certain achievements. Someone can be active but not be counted if they don't have that achievement.

I know I wasn't included until the last couple of months even though I've been playing fairly consistently the past 3 years because I had stopped MSQ progression with Heavensward (the final 3.0 quest). During HW, the census was using a post 3.0 quest to get active player numbers. It was only in July that I started working on the MSQ again because I finally about to replace the potato of a computer I'd been using. I've met other players who are far more interested in side content they've already got unlocked than in MSQ progression. Try to encourage them to continue with the MSQ to unlock even more content and the response is "Nah, I'm having fun with what I'm already doing. Maybe later.".

The active population is going to be much higher than the informal census indicates. I still don't think it's WoW level (unless WoW has fallen a lot harder than most people believe) but it's better than many assume.