Worldwide server population count for 12/17 (JST) across all servers

[Mireille]

Once again, who is gonna pay the upkeep bills? You are either funding the service or won't have one. 14k is a stupid number to bring up. It's like saying WoW has a million players. Dotdotdot.

I would add this. We can do searches and see how many characters are logged in at that moment, but that doesn't translate to how many human beings actually play the game. To find that out we would need to see how many unique account logins not tied to the same billing account take place over the course of a billing cycle.

The search's don't eliminate two boxers, rmt, or account for people who play infrequently and whose login hours don't overlap other infrequent players. Also whatever time of day these searches are being performed it's midnight for someone in some other part of the world. When you add in the dateline there is only 1 day of the week that NA/EU/JP players share in the officially recognized weekend. The actual number of people who play during a billing cycle could be 2 to 3 times the average number of characters who are logged on at any given time, or it could be as little as 1% more.

All the search really gives us is an average of how many people we have to do things with on any given day. I'm not trying to argue that this isn't relevant to the game or our experiences in it, but lets not confuse it with the total number of active players. For that we really need something along the lines of the old Vanadiel Census to be created for XIV. If and when things turn around SE may, hopefully, be willing to show us census numbers for the 1.0 lifecycle.

I'm going to do a bit of conjecture here, but it's not unreasonable to think that Yoshi's team had to sell the 2.0 concept to Wada prior to them announcing it as the future of FF XIV. Its also not unreasonable to think that he has had to justify not pulling the plug and cutting their losses on occasion. I'd bet that Japanese corporate bean-counters aren't that much different than American ones. We only have a game riding on their success; the people at SE have their careers, and ability to provide for their families riding on it. SE has publicly made it's commitment to see this through till the PS3 launch. That means they have made their decision on the future of this games development. They wont be declaring the game a flop until after the end of the V2 free to play trial period at the earliest. Until then you have a few hundred people to play around with.

I can't speak for everyone, but my linkshells don't lack for people to do things. Unless they all ragequit I'm not going to run out of people to do things with anytime soon, and in the end that's what really matters. If your server lacks for people you could take a break or reroll on a three chicken server. Join a PL group and do a few SH parties, and you will be 50 in no time. I am pretty sure I saw something about world transfers being possible in the future so you can always move that toon back to your old server or vice versa.

[Quisi]

As much as I'm annoyed by SE slugginess I think they shouldn't care right now about server populations. It would require some work to merge them and they really don't have time for that now. They put everything on version 2.0. Right now it's a beta. And only people willing to pay for beta should stay.

[Charismatic]

Join a PL group

Oh lawd, you don't realize what forums you're on do you? Also, is that the same AD from Bismarck in XI?

[Mireille]

Oh lawd, you don't realize what forums you're on do you? Also, is that the same AD from Bismarck in XI?

Its just a suggestion that there are alternatives to staying on a low population server, and not an endorsement of pling.

Yes this is the same AD that is on Bismark. The shell has a bunch of people who were in Bismarks AD in it. I played on Carbuncle, and I met the leader of AD in XIV.

[Lucifer]

I guarantee you that the subscription is to simply make a small return on the money they are spending to make 2.0.
Very distasteful business practice.

We are to become investors but we will not see a dime if the product profits.

[Kinghoran]

Once again, who is gonna pay the upkeep bills? You are either funding the service or won't have one. 14k is a stupid number to bring up. It's like saying WoW has a million players. Dotdotdot.

And WoW's subscription base is dwindling as well so according to Neptune they will fail. Even though they are getting updates consistantly, Neptune makes a great argument throwing out random numbers which are 100% correct.

[Coglin]

14k does not fund this game betelgeuzah. If you think 1.4 Million dollars a year can pay for 250 people, that means everyone is only making $5,600 a year. Something has to change for this game to make money, but it has nothing to do with charging 12,000 or so people $9.99 a month.

Well, I will tell you what, you keep every dime SE makes off subscription fees right now. I will take that 1.4 million.

Clearly $5,600 dollars a year, is $5,600 a year there not losing per person.