Am I just old fashioned?

[Magis]

We actually have over 1 million players. Right now, going by active players, there is 1.6 million active out of 4.5 million registered accounts. This does not include free months or trial. Though I haven't checked that in a while so I'm sure we have more than 1.6 million active now.

That over 500k you are toting was from a report early 2014 showing SE's sub numbers from 3 of their MMOs ending 2013, but earlier this year Polygon mistakenly published it saying it was for last year and later apologized for it, but by that point it had spread like wildfire and published by many sites. So considering by the end of 2013 we had between 500k and 1 million and game has continued to grow, and then 1.6 million by late last year, I'm sure it's a lot more now.

Where did you get your 1.6 million?

[h0tNstilettos]

Where did you get your 1.6 million?

Seriously!? This stuff is posted in the news, and there are websites like xivsoul where you can see all kinds of info taken directly from the game in almost real time, like how many people are active vs total accounts, or how many characters of each job, race distribution, etc. http://xivsoul.com/

-In early 2014 SE announced in the year ending 2013/start of 2014 we had 2.5 million registered accounts, but only between 500k and 1 million were active, over the course of 2014 that number grew.
-Then late 2014, the game releases in China some months before the end of the year. Early this year SE announced that by the end of 2014/start of 2015 we had over 4 million registered accounts, and according to those sites that take real time data from Lodestone, we had 1.6 million active by end of 2014, which makes sense since the amount of registered accounts more than doubled from a year before, so it is scaling as expected. You really think with over double the amount of registered accounts since we had just under 1 million active that we're still going to have the same number of active players we did ending 2013/starting 2014? And let's not forget the mass influx of players coming from other MMOs in 2015 up to now to add on top of that, especially with Heavensward on the horizon. Lol. Where have you been?

Some people have reported that sites like xivsoul are not accurate as they actually show 'less' than the amount we really have in the game even up to 30% less, though maybe that's because it can only pull so much data, or something causes many players and characters to be missed. There are other sites, but I don't feel like searching as I don't use them much and haven't visited in months. And even if we exclude sites like xivsoul due to in-accuracy, we still have all the other info released.

As for the mistaken sub numbers pubbed early this year, here is the link to Polygon admitting the mistake and correction. You'll see that the report was from March 2014 showing total MMO subs for SE's games ending 2013, not 2015 report showing subs ending 2014. But it was too late. The news spread like crazy and everyone still uses it to tote FFXIV's subs. But if you've played ARR since launch, you should already know it was not correct since those were the same numbers we had ending 2013, and our registered accounts have more than doubled: http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/2/7480...10-subscribers

So for current subs/active players we probably have between 2 and 3 million when you consider sites like that show a lot 'less' than we really have, or just barely under 2 million possibly.

FFXIV has
-almost 10 million characters created
-spread out across over 4 million registered accounts
-and either just under or over 2 million of those are active players unless we still have the same 1.6 million number of players ending 2014, which is doubtful as it is certainly a lot more with people coming back for Heavensward, plus brand new players jumping ship from other MMOs, especially the mass influx from WoW after the WoD expansion made them give up hope for the game.

[Magis]

People were begging for it, where are they now to defend this?

Look in the first complaint thread. 90% of the replies were people supporting it. Including me.

it had everything to do with it. it catered to a niche group, and when everyone else didn't play they had to fix it.

Uhh, cause a buggy game, that had terrible optimization problems, released in an unfinished state (and rushed in some places) was definitely not the issue.

[Dualblade]

I solo a good bit, in this MMO and others. No I did not play XI, or older "harder" MMOs...at the same time, I enjoy('d) playing with other people, making friends with them and the like. A harder open world that leads to people teaming up more often is good in my book, while at the same time it isn't going to be so difficult that you need a group just to take down one monster. People, even in groups (and before flying) will find ways to safely get around mobs without aggroing, and most likely the areas that NEED groups won't be part of the main story.

This isn't going to force you to group up, just encourage it.

Also if I'm correct 1.0's problems had very little to do with a "hard open world" and forcing people to group up or something like that.

[Musashidon]

Also if I'm correct 1.0's problems had very little to do with a "hard open world" and forcing people to group up or something like that.

it had everything to do with it. it catered to a niche group, and when everyone else didn't play they had to fix it.

[Ladon]

it had everything to do with it. it catered to a niche group, and when everyone else didn't play they had to fix it.

1.0s issues had nothing to do with catering to a niche. 1.0 straight up did not work. The game was broken and unfinished and that is what drove people away.

[Musashidon]

1.0s issues had nothing to do with catering to a niche. 1.0 straight up did not work. The game was broken and unfinished and that is what drove people away.

the issues drove players who liked the game away. the game flat out never got enough players due to it being niche with it's open world difficulty.

you can't drive away player who quit at lvl 5 due to difficulty. (or don't even flat out play it.)

[Potchi]

the issues drove players who liked the game away. the game flat out never got enough players due to it being niche with it's open world difficulty.

you can't drive away player who quit at lvl 5 due to difficulty. (or don't even flat out play it.)

Ummm... No sorry. The open world stuff had nothing to do with why many didn't like the game. I was there from the beginning and all through it with many people leaving. Open world was NEVER a reason for any of the hundreds of people I talked to...

[Ladon]

the issues drove players who liked the game away. the game flat out never got enough players due to it being niche with it's open world difficulty.

you can't drive away player who quit at lvl 5 due to difficulty. (or don't even flat out play it.)

I'm starting to get the impression that you didn't even play 1.0. The difficulty in 1.0 was not high in any way. In fact the lack of difficulty drove many FF11 players to return to FF11 after finding FF14 far too easy. There is simply nothing to support your claim that people left the game or never tried it because the open world was too difficult. Could you actually prove an example or two of the difficulties in the open world 1.0 players might have faced that drove them away?

[VargasVermillion]

People who don't want this keep acting like this will 100% require you to group up for everything, it likely won't, all it means is mobs can actually be a threat if you aren't being careful and the only thing they said 'might' require a party is the beastman areas which makes sense and should be that way tbh.
Even still with each patch new gear will come out that will nerf the content naturally, as well as being level 60 on top of that, with many more abilities to work with.