Quote Originally Posted by DPZ2 View Post
I've pretty much ignored that argument in my own recent posts. Here's another chart from the FFXIV SteamCharts. Let's use this to discuss drops in the player base, shall we?



The Steam player base was relatively flat from 2014 through 2019. Note the 'peak players' point in mid-2018, 10,272. Move directly to the right to the end of the last dip. That number is currently 33,821. Conclusion? The game now attracts 3 times as many active players as it did 5 years ago.
Nobody ever sayid we have lower player numbers than in a ARR. Its very weird to say "Hey, its not so bad. We still have more players than 2014", when ARR was still kinda bad.

We cant even compare to launch of EW, because as seen in the trend, many people come play the new expansion and then wait for next one. But we can compare player retention

What we need to compare with, is Shadowbringers, not ARR. And what we are going to find, is that current number are basically same with Shadowbringers patches, except end of ShB, because of WOW refugees and people coming back for pre-EW release. That means, we are growing, but not much. ShB kept 50% players of expansion release still playing. EW just 33%. Sadest thing is, because of content drought during coronavirus, numbers in FF werent so high back then as it could have been, even tho it rised to double back then. But that could also be because of quality of ShB.

TLDR: Endwalker, ofc, have biggest number of active players. But player retention is lower than in previous expansions.