Quote Originally Posted by Dzian View Post
While there's some loyalty there, for many players it also does a pretty good job of showing the rate at which 14 loses players. The population you see in those censuses tends not to fluctuate very much over time but when you consider the ever increasing number of new players the game pulls in.. 4 million, 5 million, 6 million, 8 million, 10 million, 12 million.... ever increasing. Yet ths population always remains about the same which is why many people say the game struggles because for every million players it pulls in, it effectively bleeds another million right out.. Which is where the sentiment about the games lack of longevity often stems from..
And that is why the number of current active players is largely irrelevant as long as it's not in constant decline and people are generally able to find other players to complete (at least the main) contents.

Beyond that, total registered accounts, the metric that SE is willing to publicly show and celebrate, is good enough to show that the game has enough interests for the company to continue investing in and for potential new players to also try. These new players may stay or they may not, but as long as the game can keep a healthy influx of new players while retaining enough of the old players (including cyclical players that unsubscribe then come back either every major patch or every expansion), then they are on the right path, in my opinion.