I guess it's time

[Obysuca]

People keep comparing 11 to 14 but despite what 11 may have done better, 14 has had up to triple the subscribers in far less time. So the reason they're reluctant to change anything is because it works to the casual player & gets them more money. Even now in this lull of the odd 3.0 patch it has almost double the subs 11 has ever had at one time. This is the sad truth. But some of the reason is probably bc FF has become more mainstream. I don't play mmos but I do play FF so they snagged me.

Well, another reason is that MMOs are more mainstream now too and also more widely accepted. Look back at the time when XI was just coming out. If you even remotely mentioned you played MMOs then, there was a pretty high chance that no one around you played them and more often than not, quite a number of people would just laugh at you for it. Now these days, a much larger portion of the population plays MMOs and they're usually seen as something for everyone and not just "something nerds do thats uncool". I can pretty much guarantee that if it was still like that, XIV would have a far lower population.

Also, going off various things, the population of XIV(about 500k-600kish) is about the same ish as what XI had at its peak, maybe 100k more. Don't go off of the "4 million accounts", because a majority of those are unactives that are still counted, people who paid months in advanced but quit, RMT etc.

And as other people have said before, XIV can't retain subs. It doesn't help that everything is instanced, cross server, so you never really make the lasting friendships that you did in XI, which can keep people playing too. I used to have a pretty decent sized friendslist back in 2.0. Only 2 of those ever log on anymore.