Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[R041]

Again, it's not a "rough spot" when it just reached the highest player population ever, and even its current late-patch lulls outpace the similar lulls from every previous expansion. It's the polar opposite of a "rough spot." It makes your attempt at an argument ultimately boil down to "I'm bitter because a lot of other people love something that I happen to dislike." The game is at a high spot right now.

I personally believe it's in a rough spot mechanically, and content wise. This lull for me has been way worse than any other in the past decade because I can't even enjoy basic combat or dungeons, yet I'm supposed to be happy that we have a few more people AFK sitting in Limsa this year. I was probably the most hyped person for Island Sanctuary and Variant.

I agree with you in the general sense that yes we're getting more players over time and that's awesome! But looking at the WoW exodus and timeline, I feel a tiny bit frustrated that maybe we missed the mark this year and didn't catch and retain as many as we could have? A lot of those players probably didn't even make it past Stormblood looking at the FF Census. Anecdotally, several of my friends that play WoW got overhyped about XIV during the exodus, but then couldn't even make it past Heavensward STILL.

Shadowbringers kinda slumped as soon as it released, then magically surged with players during the content lull. That happened because of the WoW exodus. There was nothing particularly great about Shadowbringers outside of the MSQ (Okay and Nier) that XIV did to deserved the boost, considering most of those players probably didn't even make it to Shadowbringers, and we see that only 4% even finished 6.0 as of October - So all of these players that blew up the numbers joined, ran through ARR-Heavensward, then dipped almost immediately. Most of that was due to WoW and variety Streamers hyping MSQ for their own content and hate for WoW.



I just don't really see an MMO being treated as a seasonal game you play once a year for a week a good thing when we have serious competition, and that's the trend we've set these past few years. So if if all of these people couldn't even make it past Endwalker, then why do they have a reason to be here for the next season?

If January can help us, then I'll change my tone I promise. So here's to hoping.