Now that the game is officially on its deathbed, what are your thoughts?

[AvoSturmfaust]

Except that this time it will not increase to how it was. It will be meager increase as this whole expansion was a letdown. In endwalker I had at least 60 friends constantly online, when DT came and afterwards, I have 2 friends online. All of them quit for same reasons. Player count will still be dropping and only marginal increase when "biggest" patch comes. With serious amount of issues, no doubt people just don't bother with this.

You still forget the big WoW Exodus, without it FFXIV would never reach the Numbers they had before DT so now it just goes back how it was before the exodus happend, i mean ofc some long term ffxiv player will quit but they will like i said come back for bigger patches which is completly fine, final was never a game to have a huge huge playerbase it was always kinda mid and had up and downs depending on the patch cyclus

[BigCheez]

You still forget the big WoW Exodus, without it FFXIV would never reach the Numbers they had before DT so now it just goes back how it was before the exodus happend, i mean ofc some long term ffxiv player will quit but they will like i said come back for bigger patches which is completly fine, final was never a game to have a huge huge playerbase it was always kinda mid and had up and downs depending on the patch cyclus

The WoW exodus happened in 2021. FFXIV hit its highest concurrent player count of all time when Dawntrail released in 2024. It has since hit the lowest player counts that we've seen since Stormblood.

The WoW exodus is irrelevant. COVID is irrelevant. The Yoshi-P defense squad really need to get some new material.

[Catwho]

The WoW exodus happened in 2021. FFXIV hit its highest concurrent player count of all time when Dawntrail released in 2024. It has since hit the lowest player counts that we've seen since Stormblood.

The WoW exodus is irrelevant. COVID is irrelevant. The Yoshi-P defense squad really need to get some new material.

No, the WoW exodus mattered because those players left WoW in 2021, had an 8 year content backlog to play with in XIV, and didn't go back to WoW until after Dragonflight released and the hardcore WoW players who stuck around convinced them it was good. That was in 2023.

They played Dragonflight, got bored, and bounced back over to XIV just in time for Dawntrail. That was the peak. But now they were caught up, and didn't have 8 years of content to compress into 2 years like before.

When the community turned into a negative feedback loop, a lot of them just quit both games and went to go do other stuff. Now WoW is getting the big housing update, and those former WoW players are hyped about it, while XIV isn't getting any big shiny new systems besides.... Viera hats.

[AvoSturmfaust]

No, the WoW exodus mattered because those players left WoW in 2021, had an 8 year content backlog to play with in XIV, and didn't go back to WoW until after Dragonflight released and the hardcore WoW players who stuck around convinced them it was good. That was in 2023.

They played Dragonflight, got bored, and bounced back over to XIV just in time for Dawntrail. That was the peak. But now they were caught up, and didn't have 8 years of content to compress into 2 years like before.

When the community turned into a negative feedback loop, a lot of them just quit both games and went to go do other stuff. Now WoW is getting the big housing update, and those former WoW players are hyped about it, while XIV isn't getting any big shiny new systems besides.... Viera hats.

This exactly this.

We are now just getting back to 2020 numbers, maybe lower but thats how it is, like i said previous final was always this way people quitting when there is nothing to do and coming back for bigger update, it is how it is, it will always be stay the same.