MMO addiction

[genuine_stranger]

Do you think CS3 is still coasting on the goodwill of A Realm Reborn's launch?.

In a way, yes.

This is just my personal take, so take it with a grain of salt.

I think the most goodwill came during Shadowbringers when FFXIV’s popularity exploded during the WoW exodus. That’s when the NoClip documentary gained traction, and content creators were praising the game to the skies. It felt like FFXIV was everywhere, with both big and small creators talking about it. With the track record of FFXIV’s earlier expansions and Shadowbringers’ quality, the dev team and direction looked incredibly promising. People bought in—and honestly, I think they were right to.

Then came Endwalker. While it was financially successful, it was also divisive and burned through some of that goodwill. The lackluster patches that followed only made it worse.

Now we’re at Dawntrail. Again, it’s financially successful, but it’s burned even more goodwill. At this point, I think most of it is gone. Sure, people will check out new expansions and return for patches, but unless CBU3 makes some big changes, the player numbers are likely to keep declining.

If you look at the SteamDB stats (which is really the only accessible source for tracking player activity), the player count is more or less the same as it was four years ago.

It seems like SE might have found a “happy medium,” where they can toss out mediocre expansions, churn through what’s left of the player base, and rely on that core group to sustain their income. Eventually, they could shift to maintenance mode with minimal updates while keeping the online store alive.