Quote Originally Posted by Vhailor View Post
It isn't succeeding to me, no.

Profit and quality are two entirely different things. Most of the time, when players are bringing up the idea of wanting to succeed in the context of FFXIV being stale / boring, it's in the context of quality, not profit. There are plenty of examples of half-arsed games that proved to be profitable - sometimes even wildly so. The Call of Duty franchise offers several examples just on its own. I want FFXIV to succeed as a game. My concern is never for a company's bottom line; worrying about that is the job of the publisher and the developer. My concern is for my general enjoyment, and the enjoyment of my friends, who are logging on less and less these days. If a company cannot deliver that with a certain title, regardless of the rationale, than the title has failed for me as a gamer.

Also, being second-highest compared to WoW really shouldn't be viewed as successful in the year 2018. World of Warcraft dwarfs the number of subscribers for FFXIV, and it does so despite being roughly a decade-and-a-half old. That's sad, and it's a massive indictment of any company in the MMO space that isn't creating an intentionally niche title - SE first and foremost, given their shameless efforts to ape WoW early and often.
Personally I couldn't care less how another MMO is doing, nor do I have a reason to compare MMOs to each other. Like you though there are MMOs I do not enjoy due to blunders on the company's part, or due to the company itself, despite how well the game may or may not be doing or how many players it has.