How many years do you think FFXIV has left?

[Tinibou]

I think that after Shadowbringers, there will be only one expansion left. They are working on another MMO and a lof of clues tend to that. So Shadowbringers will last 2 years, then a last expansion for 2 more years and their next MMO will be released around 2023. And I don't think they will support FFXIV like they're supporting FFXI.

[mario710]

No, this isn’t a FFXIV hate or complaint thread.

This is me genuinely wondering how long the game has left? FFXIV is the first mmo I’ve ever played, ever. So, this game will always have a special place in my heart. But most great services must eventually come to an end.

I see people complain about so many things on FFXIV....like glam, hairstyles, difficulty of content being “too easy”, customization, graphics, many things. Many things that Square Enix have shown no interest in touching.

Just makes me kind of scared of how long this game has until it’s player base decreases. What do you think? I would say 5 or 6 years.

(I will not respond to negativity)

Why is it widely accepted that everything good must have an end?

[NanaWiloh]

Their not going to drop a new MMO any time soon. If they do will it be after FFXIV story has been fully wrapped up and the game is no longer recieving expansions.

[Shirolumi]

I think that after Shadowbringers, there will be only one expansion left. They are working on another MMO and a lof of clues tend to that. So Shadowbringers will last 2 years, then a last expansion for 2 more years and their next MMO will be released around 2023. And I don't think they will support FFXIV like they're supporting FFXI.

The amount of players playing now is at an all time high so it would be a pretty risky move for them to do it like this. But we'll see how it looks at the end of the next expansion.

[Kalise]

Well... We're getting at least 2 more years thanks to ShB.

After that? Who knows.

Really, so long as the game remains profitable, it will continue to exist. Its kill switch is entirely dependent on how much profit it makes, since SE will pull the plug once it stops making enough profit.

With the significant ways where its profits will decline being things like:

* A new MMO comes out that is actually good and siphons players away (Much like how WoW refugees have been increasing the playerbase)

* An expansion flops and people become bored or disinterested in the game.

* Yoshi becomes too distracted by the other project he is working on resulting in a decline in quality of the game.

* SE releases a new FF MMO game and they want to divert players from XI and XIV to it in order to maximize efficiency (I.e. So they only have to spend resources on a single game) and ensure its success.

As for the likelyhood of any of these things? I dunno really.

I sort of expect that there'll be at least a 6.0 making the game last at least 4 years. But I think that maybe 6-10 years might be its total remaining life. I think by 10 years, something notable will have happened, such as a new MMO taking the market by storm or a new up to date game engine being made readily available that could be capitalized on (Rather than using the decades old engines of XI/XIV the latter also having 1.0 spaghetti code to deal with).

Especially since, that given how SE treats XIV as merely a cash cow, it suggests that the corporation has little attachment to the game. They just want to siphon all of its profits to other games. Irregardless of how passionate Yoshi and the devs are about the game. Hence why the team remains so limited by time and resources, too much work to rewrite code to make character creation/glamour/inventory not difficult to deal with, too much work to add in a new race (Especially one that has a radically different body type), too much work to implement much more than the core content of the game etc. All because SE is reluctant to invest into the game and would rather take its money and put it into FFXV DLC, FFVII remaster, FFXVI and other IPs...

[Vercinotrix]

Especially since, that given how SE treats XIV as merely a cash cow, it suggests that the corporation has little attachment to the game. They just want to siphon all of its profits to other games. Irregardless of how passionate Yoshi and the devs are about the game. Hence why the team remains so limited by time and resources, too much work to rewrite code to make character creation/glamour/inventory not difficult to deal with, too much work to add in a new race (Especially one that has a radically different body type), too much work to implement much more than the core content of the game etc. All because SE is reluctant to invest into the game and would rather take its money and put it into FFXV DLC, FFVII remaster, FFXVI and other IPs...

I am eternally booty blasted by this. My dislike of 7 remaster has entered into irrational loathing.

[Nalien]

And I don't think they will support FFXIV like they're supporting FFXI.

They will. XIV makes more money than XI, they'll continue to support it as long as that remains true.

I think you're half right with the one more expansion point, though. After 6.0 I think this game will see a shift in its development cycle as SE instead focuses on a new MMO. Still entirely possible we'll see "major" content and expansions though, but I expect there should be a noticeable change (more rehashing old content/reskinning, for example I expect we'll only see existing dungeons given hard and then extreme modes, rather than new dungeons) all the same. XIV has something of a horrid legacy that I think SE will want to shake... A lot of the faults we see with the game now still stem from 1.0s awful release, they rushed 2.0 out to rectify that, and against all odds it was a success, but we're more and more frequently seeing the limitations that has created. A new MMO shouldn't have those limitations, they can build it from the ground up having learned lessons here, but it's SE so they wont learn a thing and we'll see a repeat of 1.0 in all likelihood, and then much like with XI, they'll pull developers off XIV to fix XVII...

Personally though, I hope they do "end" XIV. I'd love for their next MMO to essentially be XIV-2, and they do a repeat of the 1.0 to 2.0 Legacy Character move over. From a players standpoint, that's ideal. We get essentially a new game, with a lot of the limitations fixed, and our characters carry over. From a narrative standpoint? It's a bit iffy, it's a lot easier to have a new setting than to keep reusing this one. From a business standpoint? Far better to try and double dip your playerbase with a XIV and XVII subscription fee, than to simply move all of XIVs players onto XIV-2.

[Eldevern]

Well... it depends what we mean by "lasting". It probably remains one or two (most likely) expansions before they release a new MMO. I've tried to make some kind of prospective and a new MMO announcement in 2021, a beta in 2022 and a release in 2023 wouldn't surprise me.

This said, if PS5 happens to be released in 2020, maybe they could decide to release one game sooner but I rather expect they just do a little technical up of FFXIV for the 6.0.

To create a brand new game is more or less the same price than a major technical update of an existing one if you have major programming to rebuild from scratch. It can be even more expensive to update an existing one. Then they will most likely create a new one for the PS5 (PS6) rather than spending money for a major technical ugrade of FFXIV.

If Black Desert can run on a recent mobile or tablet, FFXIV can propably run on it too. Technically, it means it really starts to be old to compare to the current "state of art" (even if F2P all look the same, even to ones "to be released").

In fact, current "casual" hardware is still pretty short for the next generation games, waiting the prices to decrease sounds necessary. And the right range will be reached in more or less four years.

[Blackbird1]

No, this isn’t a FFXIV hate or complaint thread.

This is me genuinely wondering how long the game has left? FFXIV is the first mmo I’ve ever played, ever. So, this game will always have a special place in my heart. But most great services must eventually come to an end.

I see people complain about so many things on FFXIV....like glam, hairstyles, difficulty of content being “too easy”, customization, graphics, many things. Many things that Square Enix have shown no interest in touching.

Just makes me kind of scared of how long this game has until it’s player base decreases. What do you think? I would say 5 or 6 years.

(I will not respond to negativity)

personally i think that's not a topic you wanna get into...i'm not one who believes in such things but it feels like when you ask this its just inviting an earlier end the the game best to just enjoy the game for its content among others things and just live it up while its there worry about crossing that bridge when the time has come and yoshi p or SE openly say hey thank you for your support over the years so on so forth and best of luck

[Videra]

It's a mainline Final Fantasy game, so they're never going to kill it. If their behaviour regarding FFXI is anything to go off of.