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

[Asari5]

tbf endwalkers story is also pretty bad. people like it because its the conclusion to the story. but that is all it is. they took everything the story had and ended it.
its more of a checklist to end things than an actually well-written story.

[IttyBittyShark]

you can really feel in endwalker that they hamfisted everything to try to conclude in one expansion. we were supposed to get a garlemald expansion, but apparently it is better to rush and cobble together all plot threads at once when your game is very successful. i am very bitter about this still. why rush greatness.

[Jason_Ashford]

you can really feel in endwalker that they hamfisted everything to try to conclude in one expansion. we were supposed to get a garlemald expansion, but apparently it is better to rush and cobble together all plot threads at once when your game is very successful. i am very bitter about this still. why rush greatness.

they never promised a Garlemald expansion. Yoshi-P has always been very careful about making promises that aren't set in stone. What you're referring to is from several years ago when they planned Garlemald to be the BBEG of the storyarc, but as the story unfolded, that idea changed and they were moved to secondary antagonist as the Ascians and the Final Days took center stage.

You're completely valid in your opinions. If you feel like Garlemald was squandered, that's perfectly fine, but it's important to make sure we aren't accidentally making false claims.

[IttyBittyShark]

oh, i never intended for it to come across as me saying it was something they promised. i know they weren't promising it. to my knowledge that was the premise prior, but they had changed it due to the success of the game and flood of new blood. like it would be shadowbringers > garlemald > endwalker. whatever new endwalker entailed.

[FiletMignon]

you mean the playerbase returned to the number it was before the wow exodus / covid bubble inflated it?

[Supersnow845]

you mean the playerbase returned to the number it was before the wow exodus / covid bubble inflated it?

It isn’t desirable to lose 110% of your competitors customers that they conveniently dumped in your lap

[Jason_Ashford]

It isn’t desirable to lose 110% of your competitors customers that they conveniently dumped in your lap

it's also unrealistic to assume players are going to stay subbed when there's very little to do for people in the end game at this time. the long term content wont be here until 7.35, and a lot of people choose to take a break between major expansions because they dont care about raids and such. WoW has also been doing better with their game so more people want to go play that atm.

we shouldn't start doomsaying when the game has a history of low activity during this time period.

[Alice_Rivers]

The game does have a history of low activity in the middle of the expansion but that history shows us that it never drops below the numbers of the previous expansion before and starts improving with the .3 patch.

[Striker44]

It isn’t desirable to lose 110% of your competitors customers that they conveniently dumped in your lap

Hard to say. WoW may be a "competitor," but it's not practically the exact same thing like shopping at Lowe's vs. Home Depot. FFXIV and WoW may both be MMO's, but they have very different designs and very different target audiences. WoW a long time ago went all in on the e-sports scene and views questing and leveling as more of an inconvenience where the end-game is really what matters; FFXIV emphasizes the journey itself, the story, the RP scene, etc. and has a much friendlier playerbase in-game as a result. The "exiles" from WoW didn't come here because they actually liked FFXIV; they came here because they were leaving WoW and we're the only other real destination that exists in most people's minds.

Long story short - they were never going to stay, and it's actually quite impressive that a sizable portion of them stayed as long as they did. FFXIV would have had to radically and fundamentally change the game if it wanted any hope of keeping them long-term, and even then it may not have worked (while simultaneously crashing its own game). From my view, FFXIV made the right call in staying true to what makes FFXIV what it is.

tbf endwalkers story is also pretty bad. people like it because its the conclusion to the story. but that is all it is. they took everything the story had and ended it.
its more of a checklist to end things than an actually well-written story.

TBF, every expansion is terrible according to the forums. SHB is widely viewed as the "best" expansion, but it also seriously retconned a lot of the previous lore about the Asicans, Sundering, etc.. If you were around the forums during the SHB days, guess who was posting the most...yep, the people who didn't like the retcons. Then EW came along and retconned some of the retcons. It's widely viewed as the 2nd best expansion, but likewise just got trashed here on the forums. Now that DT is the current one, it gets ****ped on while EW gets the praise it never got when it was current. It's just human nature - people come here to complain, while those having fun are more likely just playing the game itself.

[BlisteringFrost]

Hard to say. WoW may be a "competitor," but it's not practically the exact same thing like shopping at Lowe's vs. Home Depot. FFXIV and WoW may both be MMO's, but they have very different designs and very different target audiences. WoW a long time ago went all in on the e-sports scene and views questing and leveling as more of an inconvenience where the end-game is really what matters; FFXIV emphasizes the journey itself, the story, the RP scene, etc. and has a much friendlier playerbase in-game as a result. The "exiles" from WoW didn't come here because they actually liked FFXIV; they came here because they were leaving WoW and we're the only other real destination that exists in most people's minds.

Long story short - they were never going to stay, and it's actually quite impressive that a sizable portion of them stayed as long as they did. FFXIV would have had to radically and fundamentally change the game if it wanted any hope of keeping them long-term, and even then it may not have worked (while simultaneously crashing its own game). From my view, FFXIV made the right call in staying true to what makes FFXIV what it is.



TBF, every expansion is terrible according to the forums. SHB is widely viewed as the "best" expansion, but it also seriously retconned a lot of the previous lore about the Asicans, Sundering, etc.. If you were around the forums during the SHB days, guess who was posting the most...yep, the people who didn't like the retcons. Then EW came along and retconned some of the retcons. It's widely viewed as the 2nd best expansion, but likewise just got trashed here on the forums. Now that DT is the current one, it gets ****ped on while EW gets the praise it never got when it was current. It's just human nature - people come here to complain, while those having fun are more likely just playing the game itself.

You and I have very, VERY different experiences of the playerbase in FF14. I see even more toxicity just passively watching a chat on an average day than I see in WoW in a week. It's not to say nobodys Toxic in WoW. Just open Trade chat and you immediately have 30 reportable posts right away. But when most of FF14 playerbase is showing toxicity as soon as they open their metaphorical mouth it's not a good look to those of us who actually see it.

Ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't happen because most of the reasonable or, perhaps, smarter players just don't talk generally doesn't mean it isn't there.

FF14 has even brought peoples attention to the notion of Toxic Positivity more than anything else has in recent history of internet culture. Especially after the release of Endwalker where 25% of the story is LITERALLY an entire civilization being toxic-positive to a guy with depression, which almost destroyed the world.