LuckyBancho data shows that FF14 is in decline

[IkaraGreydancer]

Even if EW falls in line with ShB it still say a lot that 14 completely failed to hold the WOW refugees

No other game would see a massive injection of players, do nothing to retain them have the collective playerbase fall back to long term trends then argue that’s a good thing because they are still on long term trends, we could have had a new long term trend hundreds of thousands of people higher than the old one

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

[Ivtrix]

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

Idk I stayed LOL
But I did come a little early

[Supersnow845]

WoW players were never going to stay anyways. XIV isn't and never will scratch that WoW itch for most people

That’s not the point

The point is the WOW refugees had enough of an impact it was worth editing parts of 14’s design in an effort to keep them

Not go “lol too bad so sad”

[IkaraGreydancer]

That’s not the point

The point is the WOW refugees had enough of an impact it was worth editing parts of 14’s design in an effort to keep them

Not go “lol too bad so sad”

I don't think it was worth editing at all. They were only here because WoW was having issues. People play xiv for what xiv offers. People play WoW for what WoW offers. Neither needs to "edit" anything to capture each other's playerbases.

[Supersnow845]

I don't think it was worth editing at all. They were only here because WoW was having issues. People play xiv for what xiv offers. People play WoW for what WoW offers. Neither needs to "edit" anything to capture each other's playerbases.

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

[IkaraGreydancer]

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things. Why waste time trying and risking your core when you already know what they look for in a game? They don't have to change shizz for WoW folks. I guarantee you WoW ain't changing a damn thing if XIV players went over there.

Also you talk as if CBU3 is this massive team on xiv. News Flash it's not, and is why or patch cycle is the length it is rn. They have a whole 7.0 to focus on. I'd rather they make sure that is good than stretch themselves out for a CHANCE to appease the WoW crowd.

[Supersnow845]

You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things. Why waste time trying and risking your core when you already know what they look for in a game? They don't have to change shizz for WoW folks. I guarantee you WoW ain't changing a damn thing if XIV players went over there.

Also you talk as if CBU3 is this massive team on xiv. News Flash it's not, and is why or patch cycle is the length it is rn. They have a whole 7.0 to focus on. I'd rather they make sure that is good than stretch themselves out for a CHANCE to appease the WoW crowd.

The games aren’t that different, I swear people who think WOW chains you to the game haven’t played since MOP, if 14 tried they 100% could hold onto some of the WOW players, it’s not like the refugees are a monolith, regardless 14 didn’t even try and now EW may end up finishing lower than ShB started which is not a good result

If the team on 14 isn’t massive it should be considering that 14 is squares cash cow, extending the patch cycle achieved nothing other than plummeting player retention and they still made less content, 7.0 isn’t an excuse, tje game simply doesn’t release enough content

[IkaraGreydancer]

The games aren’t that different, I swear people who think WOW chains you to the game haven’t played since MOP, if 14 tried they 100% could hold onto some of the WOW players, it’s not like the refugees are a monolith, regardless 14 didn’t even try and now EW may end up finishing lower than ShB started which is not a good result

If the team on 14 isn’t massive it should be considering that 14 is squares cash cow, extending the patch cycle achieved nothing other than plummeting player retention and they still made less content, 7.0 isn’t an excuse, tje game simply doesn’t release enough content

Well you're conflating my point. My point isn't about how much they release. It's about how they're stretched thin due to SE and so doing extra hoping to appeal to a seperate fanbase isn't a priority. 7.0 is. You say it's not an excuse but it IS the reality. It sucks sure but SE is to blame for the majority of that, not CBU3.

[Sebazy]

I would expect the same from a FFXIV refugee over in WoW as well. One is a main game, the other is a side game.

FFXIV used to do absolutely fine in this regard though.

You used to have a healthy and strong community of raiders that would be often be clearing weekly without fail regardless of if we were just post or pre content drops. Go back to 2.x to 3.1ish and you'd regularly see groups queueing outside Wineport/Alex all year round. It's harder to gauge now with remote queueing for Savage but at least from my circle's experience we continued to raid solidly through the rest of HW and SB.

What's changed? The raid community never used to be a ghost town 2 months from a content drop like the way it is now.

To me it feels like SE have been throwing darts at a wall with side content and trimmings to see what sticks for years now which personally I don't have a problem with at all, but in the process they've let the fundamental core game underneath go rotten and stale.

You CANT onboard them while retaining your current core when the game operates differently fundamentally. When the playerbases are looking for entirely different things.

The same point stands here as well really. I'd say it's as much the end game raid scene that's died as it is WoW refugees leaving. This game catered just fine to them for years, but seemingly it doesn't cut it anymore.

[Jojoya]

Yes but if 14 wasn’t so allergic to releasing content they could have captured even 20% of that market

Let’s say they kicked it into high gear and vomited out and extra zone for Bozja in 7.0 and maybe a second deep dungeon, not much work in the grand scheme of things but something that might have encouraged even 20% of the WOW refugees to stay with zero negative effects on the current playerbase

If you are in an industry and a competitor dumps their customers into your lap you don’t ignore them because they have slightly different tastes, you attempt to permanently onboard them without affecting your core market, 14 didn’t even try, it basically just sat there and said “we are changing nothing if you aren’t interested you can go away”

How would you have onboarded more WoW players without affecting the core?

More Bozja would not have been the way to go. WoW has no Bozja-like content and the only WoW players that would have gotten far enough to experience it would have already committed to playing FFXIV on a regular basis. 5.0 MSQ plus completion of Ivalice is a fairly big barrier unless they were buying job boosts and story skips.

WoW players were fed a diet primarily of PvP, M+, which does not have an equivalent in FFXIV, and raiding. We are seeing many WoW players enjoying the raiding since they're finally free of Weak Auras. They're now playing both games for the raiding.

No serious PvPer would pick FFXIV over WoW PvP, though it's possible that FFXIV PvP might have won over some of the casual PvPers (that I genuinely have no idea about since I don't PvP so I rarely talk to them).

FFXIV is still missing something that fills the M+ gap. If SE wanted to win over more of the WoW players, that's what they would need to focus on but it's going to take them time to develop it. Could something similar to M+ be the mysterious new Battle Content for Dawntrail?

FFXIV also won over many of the casual WoW players that realized they hated WoW's rush to endgame to start gear grinding design. They've enjoyed the story-based approach to leveling.

I wouldn't be surprised if FFXIV did latch onto 20% of those who came from WoW during the exodus. If FFXIV numbers have dropped enough that the active player base is not at least 20% higher than pre-Exodus, there is loss somewhere else.

The achievement graph is not the place to determine that since the data is collected from a subset of players that are self-selected. If any of LB's data is going to be accepted as representative, the place to check would be LB's actual census.

Active characters over free trial level cap:

April 2021 - 951,307 (pre-exodus)
Nov 2021 - 1,624,238 (post-exodus, pre-EW)
Jan 2022 - 1,347,764 (first census after EW release)
July 2023 - 1,137,275 (most recent - 19.5% increase over pre-exodus)

More numbers that might be helpful to identify "intensity" of player engagement in EW compared to the same point in Shadowbringers:

(Feb 2021) active Level 80 characters after release of 5.4: 692,683 out of 906,740 total active characters (76%)
(July 2023) active Level 90 characters after release of 6.4: 894,467 out of 1,137,275 total active characters (78%)

I'm not going to comment on the numbers - feel free to create your own interpretations based off things like alts, people subscribed only to retain their house, etc. Also feel free to make your own copy of LB's census to gather numbers from other census dates and data types.