Worldwide server population count for 12/17 (JST) across all servers

[ChiefCurrahee]

I wasn't logged in at that time!

So Add +1 to that number!!!!

who else wasn't logged in when they took that count?

[Jennestia]

These populations are discouraging because to have a healthy MMO with lots of content, it has to be profitable. Ya, you won't interact with millions of other players, but you'll get expansions, lots of content with patches, more game tweaking, etc if the game is raking in millions a month vs hundreds of thousands a month.

The fact they're redoing the client and servers without a large population (let alone a paying population) should tell you it's not necessarily the number of people playing that brings game tweaks and expansions, it helps sure, but F2P MMOs with significantly less than 100,000 users per region still get episodic content.

[TheVedis]

The fact they're redoing the client and servers without a large population (let alone a paying population) should tell you it's not necessarily the number of people playing that brings game tweaks and expansions, it helps sure, but F2P MMOs with significantly less than 100,000 users per region still get episodic content.

you dont understand what f2p games are im guessing

they come out with content so that they can SELL the content

the games arent actualy free, thats just a term to describe non subscription, everything in game however is expensive

[Zanfire]

You just have to search by Grand Company, and add it all up, you may also need to vary the levels a bit to get a running total.

TheVedis...the problem here is servers like Karnak and Mysidia (the less populated ones), are at about 250 players during NA primetime. That's pathetic if you don't belong to one of the big 50-100 man shells, you won't get a whole lot done. It's clear judging by your sig that you play a lot and have friends within your shell to get things done, that's fantastic but not the case for every player.

With 250 players and about 80% of those being level 50, good luck leveling up in a party anywhere between 10-49. Certain servers during JP peak time only hit about 600-800 on a Friday night, right after a patch, again, very low numbers. People can argue, other non-big MMO's have only 3 servers, that's fine, but they have quite a few people on them at any given time, not 250! There could be 100,000 subscriptions right now, but if only a handful of them are logging on, there's a problem.

These populations are discouraging because to have a healthy MMO with lots of content, it has to be profitable. Ya, you won't interact with millions of other players, but you'll get expansions, lots of content with patches, more game tweaking, etc if the game is raking in millions a month vs hundreds of thousands a month.

I'll also say, I enjoy this game, do have a level 50 job, and will probably pay to play. Either way you look at this though, it's not good for the long term of this game, you WANT subscriptions and lots of them. I want to see 4-5 expansions for this game with great cutscenes and a good storyline and new events being added every few months.

my first character along with like 7 RL friends all played on Mysidia when the game came out, it was actually so packed we couldnt get on the server for a couple days. Now is a total dead zone. me and the only friend of mine left bothering to keep up with the game and poke around the patches have been trying to get low end PTs going for a while...and its almost impossible. Your either @50 or your scrounging like hell to get a group.

As for Lindblum...its pretty well packed, though apparently its now one fo the high end servers now anyway. My friend cant shift here obviously and he doesnt want to restart, so we are both kind of getting bored already. This games rep is already in the trash, might as well let people server swap when pay starts or merge servers...need to keep what little they have around.

Also 20-30k seems like a good guess, id be baffled if it was above 50k.

[Mireille]

What's pretty depressing about this is that with the sub model restored and if we were to keep this population, Square would only be getting $120,000 USD/month from subs alone. Even if they kept the original price of $15/month, that would be still only $180,000/month for them. I have no idea if that even pays for the upkeep costs of their servers plus the monthly salaries of their devs.

I can pretty much guarantee you the answer to that is no. Running a small data center with 20 IT staffers costs us around 4 million annually, and that's just fixed costs plus salaries/benefits. When you add in development costs and new installations you could be talking millions more each year depending on what you are doing. The sub at best helps SE defray the costs.

I read somewhere that SE kept the game going with no fee by not taking outside investments. If this is true then the sub is either a player investment in the future of the game, or a means whereby they can accept outside investors into the project again.

I'd expect the population to drop, but not by as much as it would have prior to the 2.0 announcement. That's just based on a general change in the tone of people posting in the forums. Until the release of 2.0 the players who pay the sub would probably do well to think of this as a closed beta and not a production game in spite of the fee. I expect there will be a lot of content like the 5 NM Moogle fight quest that really pisses us off and doesn't make it to 2.0 without major alteration if it makes it at all. As long as SE approaches this stuff with a willingness to make changes to make it playable there isn't a lot of point is raising your blood pressure over it.

As far as the population count goes we now get to see how many people are on the server. SE has seen these numbers all along and still thinks the game is worth putting time and money into. If you think they are horribly wrong then now is probably the time to go.

I setup my fee pay as soon as I logged in yesterday, so I'm going out on a limb and trusting them to get it right the 2.0 time around.

Edit: Grammar

[Zanfire]

^ i dont so much think that they see it as a good stable number of players, but see it as "hey we got over half a million people to buy the game, so if we fix it and re-brand it a 2.0....and finally get it on PS3, we could do great".

what they have now for a population is probably a joke, but the future potential with 2.0 is huge...and SE is unbelievably prideful, and they dont want a FF#d sequel to die off.

[Heoki]

How are you able to get a server wide search? Seems limited to 200 per search.

[Mireille]

How are you able to get a server wide search? Seems limited to 200 per search.

Break it down by region, and use a calculator. You may have to break ul'dah down by levels on top of that.

[SuzakuCMX]

I think the best determinant will be this coming week. This past week was College Finals week so lots of people were studying or traveling back home for the holidays. I think we'll see an increase between now and Jan 6.

[Fanzeron]

I really hope so. Certainly, the game is not dead, but there isn't nearly as much people as it was with patch 1.19. I'm also counting it's because of finals or winter vacation.