I do think there's a decent amount of competition. It's not so much what we, as individuals, may play but rather what other people might be inclined to play. That's likely the same thought process for the development team and investors given their obsession with trying to 'poach' players from other games and appeal to completely new players altogether.

Guild Wars 2 recently launched a new expansion and although I'm not aware of how popular it is, I imagine it has enough people playing to justify further investment.

Elder Scrolls Online has been putting out content on a steady basis for almost as long as FFXIV. It's due to launch another expansion within a couple of months focused around Bretons. I'll be checking it out myself, since I play it occasionally and they're one of my favourite playable races in the setting.

Lost Ark recently launched in the West. I've been playing that occasionally as well. There's a lot of content and although it has some F2P elements that I dislike, it's still pretty generous with how it handles giving players free items and the like. I was surprised by how beautiful the game world, character models and music are.

The elephant in the room is World of Warcraft. A beloved IP mired in controversy with an uncanny ability to lean on fanservice in order to bounce back from even the gravest of scandals. I've long since washed my hands of the game, though there's still people who play it and a new expansion was revealed just today. Perhaps most importantly, there will be a relaunch of the game's most beloved expansion in the 'Classic' format. Wrath of the Lich King had roughly ten million active players back in the day - and if even 10% of them are inclined to check it out due to nostalgia? Well, I daresay that qualifies as 'competition'.

I'm pretty much at the point where I no longer take anything in FFXIV for granted, or just accept whatever is pushed out. I want to see the development team tap into the same passion and loyalty to their fans that they displayed during the transition from 1.0 to 2.0. Because the games I mentioned above are all MMO's and there's plenty of single player games/pseudo-MMO's I could bring up as well that are also competing for people's time and attention. Such as Elden Ring.