I got the same guy 2 roulettes in a row the other day lol. I didn't think much of it since it was like 2 am though.

Like it or not, the simple truth is this game's always gone on a downward population trend like this, where for one month there'll be a sharp player increase followed by 4-5 months of the player count decreasing until the next patch. People here hate steamcharts being mentioned but I think using them to observe basic trends is fine really. It just shows what's obvious to anyone who's honest: that all we do for months is lose people, and then we get a few of them back for a new patch, and then we lose more people, with the pattern operating at (generally) a net loss until the new expansion comes out. Then we get a surge of returning people who check out the new patch, followed by a slow decline once more when they mostly quit. Personally? I really can't stand it. I think with even an ounce of effort between content lulls, we could at least stop losing more people than we gain, since XIV has a lot of cool stuff in it that the devs don't even bother trying to incentivize. But that ship has sailed, so there it is. Most people I know play this game seasonally and the head dev encourages it, so nobody should treat FFXIV like their main mmo. It feels more like a hub game with brief multiplayer elements than an actual thriving open world mmo game.