I guess it's time

[Ryel]

Yes, the population always declines at the end of patch cycles, and it also declined toward the end of 2.x. But whenever the big patch hits, or the expansion hits, everyone comes back. And I bet a lot of those people don't even cancel their subs... they're just playing other games while waiting for the new content.

And yet for a subscription based MMO this should never actually be the case.

The entire point behind a subscription model is that you're paying not only for regular updates but also a steady stream of interesting activity (this is subjective), there are f2p and b2p games on the market that are currently matching the pace of play that XIV is currently providing and this shouldn't really be the case.

If a large numbers of players are consistently declining in activity for predictable periods every single patch i would say that's something that warrants investigation as our subs don't magically lower themselves to match this decline, yet features like housing require us to remain bound to the game no matter what the state of content currently is.

It's also been observed by many, that a large number of players who leave during these slow periods aren't actually coming back or if they are they're only doing so during the free login periods and not actually re-subbing, the irony is that you're posting in a thread where the OP is quite literally giving reasons as to why they're unsubscribing from the game with many agreeing with and following suit because of those reasons.

I've never seen any interview or data saying the game has fewer than 500k active subs, btw. And on Hyperion, I see no visual evidence that would lead me to think anything is in decline.

No company actually does this, in fact standard practice is to -not- release numbers when they start to decline. Someone actually did post the results of the unofficial census earlier in this thread that actually did illustrate a massive decline in subs around the period of 3.0-3.1

The game is going to be fine. It has its audience, and the development team is continuing to spice things up. We have years and years to look forward to.

There are many players from that audience also voicing concerns with the content as a whole, or are those complaints somehow worth less than others?