Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Tolmos]

It's amazing what people view as successful games vs dead games these days. There has to be literal millions of people for players to think the game is thriving, despite the fact that your average MMO server will barely house 15,000-25,000 at a time TOPS. Thats literally all you need for your server to feel like it's exploding with people.

And if it's money concerns, I can't see that being a big issue either. 500,000 players paying 15 a month (minimum of $11 and maximum in the $20s with retainers) just for subs comes out to an average of ~$7,500,000 of sub money a month. That's not even counting people buying stuff off the Mogstation.

For real folks; even if these numbers are accurate, FFXIV is leaps and bounds above most of its competition out there. There may be probably 4 or 5 MMOs ahead of it in terms of numbers and income, on a bad day.

The game ain't dying. Let it go, like Elsa, and log in to have some fun!

[Alberel]

It's amazing what people view as successful games vs dead games these days. There has to be literal millions of people for players to think the game is thriving, despite the fact that your average MMO server will barely house 15,000-25,000 at a time TOPS. Thats literally all you need for your server to feel like it's exploding with people.

And if it's money concerns, I can't see that being a big issue either. 500,000 players paying 15 a month (minimum of $11 and maximum in the $20s with retainers) just for subs comes out to an average of ~$7,500,000 of sub money a month. That's not even counting people buying stuff off the Mogstation.

For real folks; even if these numbers are accurate, FFXIV is leaps and bounds above most of its competition out there. There may be probably 4 or 5 MMOs ahead of it in terms of numbers and income, on a bad day.

The game ain't dying. Let it go, like Elsa, and log in to have some fun!

Of the subscription MMOs that still exist I think it's actually second or third. 500k subs is actually really REALLY good for an MMO. Prior to WoW's existence the previous top-dog (Everquest) was hovering around the same number. WoW's success was a complete fluke simply due to making the genre relatively 'mainstream'. It's success will never be repeated, yet people continue to use it as a benchmark.

Honestly anything above 200k subs is fine for a healthy MMO if that number is relatively stable. People really need to stop thinking of WoW as the model of success. Business execs thinking like that is precisely why subscription MMOs have been struggling; they commit too much money during development expecting millions of subscribers that don't exist.