Another one of these threads? I love that people are trying to use actual data beyond "Nobody on my friends list logs in anymore, therefore the game is dying!" I hate that people are trying to make that data say something it doesn't.

The lodestone lets people hide much of their data so any data you get from it is immediately suspect. Taking what data is left on the lodestone and interpreting that to mean the game is dying is absurd. There simply isn't enough data to make that conclusion, all people are doing is confirming their own bias on this discussion.

Not everyone does end game raiding, not everyone does MSQ, not everyone does achievement hunting, not everyone gets all the mounts, not everyone gets all the minions. The fact is, the lodestone does NOT give you enough complete data sets to jump to any accurate conclusions. It doesn't even give you enough details to determine how to weigh partial data sets to draw correlations between them. This doesn't even touch on the reality that MMO subs have a cycle between patches/expansions and a give and take with other MMOs. All you have is assumptions and guesses, not actual evidence of anything.

For myself, I don't collect minions, I don't do end game raiding but I like the MSQ, I have leveled a lot of the classes but its been months since I've played anything thats not level 60. According to your methods I'm not an active player despite logging in almost daily.

Most of my friends are crafters and many of them don't care about the MSQ or mounts or raiding. According to your methods none of them are active players despite playing 6 hours a day, every day.

So...yeah...quit making these polls to confirm your bias that the game is in a bad state. They're inaccurate and misleading. Nothing short of SE giving us the data would enable us to draw any conclusions accurately.