FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Luca_]

When is FF14 NOT on a content drought? I swear I keep seeing this word throughout the years and its like.... did we ever have a time that wasn't considered a content drought?

That's exactly what I mean by "perpetual." I can't think of another game that markets its expansion features by saying "by the way, we're going to dripfeed all of this to you and 75% of it won't be available until a year or two after launch." I think it's only now becoming a real sore spot for a couple reasons:

1. The players that swapped over from WoW have long since reached endgame and had a few years to catch up on the backlog of available content, and are now finding that new content drops are few and far between.

2. FFXIV's main draw has always been its story and having such an excellent narrative let players forgive a lot of questionable decisions elsewhere, but Dawntrail's MSQ was divisive at best. When there's a constant lack of things to do and people don't like the MSQ, there's nothing to fall back on.

3. And finally, patch cycles are now just SO. LONG. They take twice as long to push out half as much content as other MMOs while having the most stringent and predictable formula of all.

[Red-thunder]

That's exactly what I mean by "perpetual." I can't think of another game that markets its expansion features by saying "by the way, we're going to dripfeed all of this to you and 75% of it won't be available until a year or two after launch." I think it's only now becoming a real sore spot for a couple reasons:

1. The players that swapped over from WoW have long since reached endgame and had a few years to catch up on the backlog of available content, and are now finding that new content drops are few and far between.

2. FFXIV's main draw has always been its story and having such an excellent narrative let players forgive a lot of questionable decisions elsewhere, but Dawntrail's MSQ was divisive at best. When there's a constant lack of things to do and people don't like the MSQ, there's nothing to fall back on.

3. And finally, patch cycles are now just SO. LONG. They take twice as long to push out half as much content as other MMOs while having the most stringent and predictable formula of all.

They also just don't know how to design long-lasting content that isn't just [Collect 5000 Accursed Hoards from PotD].