If it is not broken, DO NO FIX IT!

[Abriael]

I'm sure you know quite a bit about game developers.

I happen to.

This game costs millions of dollars to operate. The amount of money lost on this game is significant. Last year a little after the game was released SE lost $26 million in one day in stocks and XIV was blamed for that. Although the amount recovered over time, many stockholders have been dropping out due to this game's performance.

And the sole fact that Square Enix is shouldering the costs and not showing the slightest drop in support for the game (quite the contrary, they reinforced the team), is quite the indication that the game isn't even near death. I've seen plenty games near death, and the indications on the developers side are always evident when you know where to look (layoffs, extreme attempts to juice the remaining customerbase as much as possible, and so forth).
None of such indications surfaced for FFXIV. Quite the contrary.

Broken means unbalanced and/or unenjoyable. I'm not too sure what it means to you. The game is unbalanced.

No. Unbalanced means unbalanced. Unenjoyable means unenjyable (and this is very devatable, since I know quite a lot of people that enjoy it, I happen to as well, despite having my fair share of pet peeves). The nearest synonimous to "broken" when relates to games is "Unplayable" and FFXIV is very far from being unplayable.

The "verge of death" is indeed true. If major changes do not happen which will bring a large quantity of players back within the next few months to a year, and the PS3 release is not a success (I'm personally sure it will be), FFXIV may very well be unplugged.

A year? That's a very elastic interpretation of the expression "on the verge" isn't it?

Checking your lodestone I see you started when the game was released. I'm not sure what your server is like but if it was anything like mine every camp you'd go to and every city had several dozen to a couple hundred players at once. Everywhere was completely packed. Now, you'd be lucky to see 15 people at any one camp. The only camps I really see people at are at grinding camps and I only see about 20-30 people maximum. Limsa and Gridania are almost completely dead and Ul'dah has about 60-100 people in it. From what I can tell, Besaid is one of the most populated servers.

That situation is very common to the launch of new MMORPGs. The average MMORPG gamer plays a lot during the first two weeks as much as every single days for several hours. Then many end up playing as little as 1 day a week, or even less. It's the simple passage from novelty to routine, and while it may be worse than the average in FFXIV, it's not nearly as bad as some (you) describe.

It's not just in FFXIV, and I've seen populations drop much faster.

Those numbers are low. This game had several hundred thousand players registered (above 600,000 I believe) and it has dropped down to 17,000-30,000 active players maximum.

You have absolutely no concrete data to back up that estimate.

Edit: Oh yeah, and poll results.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678

There's your majority.

I must have missed the part of that poll in which they asked "do you dislike the game?" and the majority answered "yes"