State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[Lauront]

Evidence? The game usually grows by 200,000 consistently active players after an expansion according to years of Lucky Bancho statistics, yet it's grown by either as much or more than that this time. It's double the increase we were seeing since Shadowbringers during patch lulls.

He is referring to the Steam figures - which Lucky Bancho himself refers to in both this most recent survey and the previous one.