Quote Originally Posted by Volgia View Post
I'm unsatisfied that this shows the game is in decline.

I'm biased because there's A LOT I dislike about Endwalker and it's gutted content and that being the case I can look at numbers going down and say yeah see, objectively it's in decline.

But moving beyond my biases, has FF14 lost social impact within live service games and MMOs? Have a massive amount of players lost interest in playing Dawntrail? Has the game faded out of the gaming community consciousness? Like to me, the answer is no. Cuz people who hate, are ambivalent or are okay with Endwalker are all waiting expectantly to see what Dawntrail will do.
For a long time Destiny 2 was touted as one of the OG successful live service games and it seemed like nothing would take it down. Then the Lightfall expansion happened, revenue dipped 45% and Bungie laid off 100+ people including their logo designer and composer. A lot can change over one or two years. Even if DawnTrail inevitably sees a pop, I would say there's growing negative sentiment brewing already and once people get through MSQ it's just a question of whether those players end up back in a state of discontent. That is what has killed D2-- the assumption that the whales would just always be around to offset the critics. Well it turns out they aren't.