What do you think will happen to a failed data center?

[ironbutterfly]

I am getting tired of seeing OCE is dead.
Has it had it's issues. Yes. Is it dead and buried and we should give up? Not yet. It's not even a year old and you're trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. It's going to take time to grow so stop dragging it down.

[Stormpeaks]

I am getting tired of seeing OCE is dead.
Has it had it's issues. Yes. Is it dead and buried and we should give up? Not yet. It's not even a year old and you're trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. It's going to take time to grow so stop dragging it down.

it aint growing people are leaving, time to wake up

[DeNada]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

[PirateRyanG]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

People always say that WOW peaked at Lich King, when every expansion since (bar Mists) has outsold Lich King Day 1. WOW is making more money than ever before....

[Jojoya]

People always say that WOW peaked at Lich King, when every expansion since (bar Mists) has outsold Lich King Day 1. WOW is making more money than ever before....

Vanilla, BC, and Wrath didn't have digital download pre-orders with bonuses. Most players were still going into a store to buy a physical copy on or after release date though some would pre-order their box copy through Amazon or their local game store.

The expansions from Cataclysm on did. That encouraged more players to pre-order for the sake of getting the bonuses, boosting day one sales totals (since the pre-orders couldn't be claimed as sales until release date).

Considering the subscription price hasn't changed between then and now, subscription revenues are way down and expansion price only brings in 1/3 of what an annual subscription does. They're certainly not making money there when the current player base is estimated to be in the 3-4 million range with a large portion of those only playing Classic.

Are cash shop and character service transactions increasing their revenues beyond what they were making back in 2010? Don't know. Certainly they have a ton more items on their cash shop than existed back then and character service transaction were booming for a while though I don't know how much are getting used anymore.

Honestly, there's no way to tell whether this game has peaked yet. We'll need to wait and see the long term response to the new story arc being introduced in 6.5.

[NekoMataMata]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

I don't know enough about WoW to make any kind of judgement on it, but I think there's a lot of factors to take into consideration like the ones Jojoya mentioned.

Besides that, I think video games of any kind are super seasonal now. People play games when they're hyped up/brand new and then forget about them later. Even single player games suffer from this. There's no retention with playing games I feel. People who play something on day one of its release may not play throughout the existence of the game.

SE probably has accurate stats, but it's also probably fluffed a little bit.

[Raoabolic]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

I would actually draw parallels to the story of Shadowlands. The story felt like a brand new character they introduced suddenly is the big bad guy, the story they were building towards felt like it was hand waved away for all these new characters, and if we are going to go beyond story then we have to think of the "facebook waiting games" that each expansion brought (garrisons/Island sancturary). EW was a lot of things but it wasn't this game's Wrath of the Lich King.

[caffe_macchiato]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

The content lull gives people time to play better video games. Therefore, by giving us time to play them, FFXIV is actually doing a good thing by having a content lull. This is by design. This is how the game was meant to be. I don't want to play FFXIV all day, I want to play something that's actually good. Thank you, Yoshida. My shrinking backlog of games thanks you. My WoW toon thanks you. My Pokédex thanks you. This 100-minute queue in Dynamis has really added a lot to my life.

[Iscah]

The content lull gives people time to play better video games. Therefore, by giving us time to play them, FFXIV is actually doing a good thing by having a content lull. This is by design. This is how the game was meant to be. I don't want to play FFXIV all day, I want to play something that's actually good. Thank you, Yoshida. My shrinking backlog of games thanks you. My WoW toon thanks you. My Pokédex thanks you. This 100-minute queue in Dynamis has really added a lot to my life.

There is indeed nothing stopping you from playing other games if you feel the need to be so sarcastic about this one.

[caffe_macchiato]

There is indeed nothing stopping you from playing other games if you feel the need to be so sarcastic about this one.

Absolutely true. Playing FFXIV is a choice. And, you should be glad to hear that hundreds of thousands of subscribers are also taking a break from the game to play something else, just as you recommended.

But one slight problem. As a result, queues for everyone else are dead across the board. SE launched a new datacenter that now struggles to fill queues. Players need to log out in order to play most content. Materia fares even worse, because they can’t DC travel. Content for most players is simply impossible, and they cannot finish the game. Your queues will also slow down. Your party finder will die out, if it hasn’t already.

But, as you would agree: there’s nothing stopping us from playing other games, so what’s the big deal? More people will follow. Then the game will die. The end! And, with all the other games for us to play, is that really a bad thing?