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

[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.