How many people play FFXIV?

[Bahn]

That said, the feature to view how many people are currently playing is already in the game, Square Enix just has to turn it the $(@^ on again. When the game first flopped, they actually disabled it so we couldn't check for ourselves and see how bad it was doing.

I forgot how disgusted I was with that tactic, so thanks for bringing that back to the surface.

Dear SE: Turn it back on. Thanks.

Agreed. It was pretty dirty of SE to remove it. What amazed me was a good portion of the community SUPPORTED this measure and tried to justify it by saying it was bad for the community that people should know how our server populations are falling (I'm sure it was directly influenced by that chart that Japanese players were distributing around). This is no better than a politician trying to cover up a fuck up they did. It just makes it THAT much more obvious that they fucked up.

So definitely, +1, turn it back on. It's in the game SE, you know it, everyone who played the game since release knows it. And hey, the populations are increasing! That should help your PR - that's the reason why you turned it off in the first place, RIGHT?

[Anonymoose]

good portion of the community SUPPORTED this measure and tried to justify it by saying it was bad for the community that people should know how our server populations are falling.

What (no offense people) moron thought that was a good idea? "Let's just remove world population view and maybe they won't notice the drastic decrease in players!" ... Except for when Gridania and Limsa are abandoned, all remaining players converge on Ul'dah, the wards are empty, all the shouts are in JPN, and only two rival linkshells exist in each language...

[Murugan]

What (no offense people) moron thought that was a good idea? "Let's just remove world population view and maybe they won't notice the drastic decrease in players!" ... Except for when Gridania and Limsa are abandoned, all remaining players converge on Ul'dah, the wards are empty, all the shouts are in JPN, and only two rival linkshells exist in each language...

A world population view never existed. What existed was a truncated area search, which a Japanese player used to create a graph describing the declining population.

The problem was the graph was flawed.

• The person used unverified sampling on many servers from what amounts to random "researchers".
• Failed to get a good sampling of all time zones.
• Observed the population for too short of a period, with limited (and worst of all not even consistent) windows.
  • For example if I did a /sea count on Tuesday every week and you never played on Tuesdays you would not be counted as an active player.
  • Even worse, if I did it at 9pm one Tuesday and then 1 am the next Tuesday after you went to bed my data would show you as "no longer active".

That the population was declining was obvious to everyone, and by attaching these "real numbers" to it people (especially forum trolls) rallied behind it. It (the flawed statistics) became an increasingly distracting issue for the community and so they removed the /sea ability.

They could, and should have instead just struck back at the graph and other spurious claims by pointing out its flaws and releasing more accurate information themselves. However, this was at the point where they were already being forced to admit that FFXIV did not hit its target, were replacing the team, and probably thought this wasn't the conversation they wanted to be having.

There was never an accurate population count released. I for one think that they should release population numbers. They themselves said that they will push towards 2.0 even if no one is playing, I don't see what the harm is in letting us know the total numbers (if not server population) at least until 2.0.

It would either show

• How dedicated they remain to the game despite its low population (which would help the fears of people worried that the game could shut down).
• Growth.

[Synfrag]

56,782~56,845 as of 16.11.2011.

DD/MM/YY. Suck it, America.

Pretty effing rude man, why do you feel the need to bash the US?

[NadienKirisame]

Pretty effing rude man, why do you feel the need to bash the US?

Because he hates the fact the US is better then him :P

<3 Betel hehe

The cat is silly amused =*,*=

[Antipika]

2011-11-16, JP date format (ISO) all the way please!

Also where are numbers publicly available ? (just curious)

[Betelgeuzah]

Also where are numbers publicly available ? (just curious)

86,4% of internet statistics are made up on the spot fyi.

The game has been a steady seller internationally ever since the release. So I would assume that the base is growing little by little ever after the first few months.

[XxOstiaxX]

86,4% of internet statistics are made up on the spot fyi.

The game has been a steady seller internationally ever since the release. So I would assume that the base is growing little by little ever after the first few months.

A steady seller ? A STEADY SELLER ? 1 year and some months later, still not sold 1million copy's.

[Blarp]

A steady seller ? A STEADY SELLER ? 1 year and some months later, still not sold 1million copy's.

For reference SWTOR has sold almost a million NA pre-orders five weeks from launch. They logged over a million tester hours in a single weekend.

[weeble]

For reference SWTOR has sold almost a million NA pre-orders five weeks from launch. They logged over a million tester hours in a single weekend.

lol just in the 3day stress test, i loged into my first server with a 550 person wait que, then when logging back in cause this was one of the way over populated servers, i was at a 5500 person wait que. i ended up rerolling to a empterier server and it didn't have que's but it was packed with players, every inch of every zone had players running around and 0 problems getting groups, even though the game is something u can pretty much solo. the 4man stuff was fun but way easy. non the less the game will be very fun for something to do while this game shapes up/or dies off without getting my money.lol.