80,000 active characters, gone. That is a substantial drop. Were I to speculate on the cause. Unlike Heavensward, every veteran player knows the devs have virtually nothing on the horizon outside the standard release for what will amount to a 9-10 month life cycle for content that can barely keep seven months going.

It doesn't help with nothing else coming except our usual 24 Man, EX and etc, people are even less motivated about gear progression or raiding. Plenty of raiders amongst my circle have either killed Alphascape a couple times or aren't bothering until near the end of the expansion because the gear means nothing.

Arguably the bigger factor here though, is Pagos. It looks the general assumption from the last census was correct. People returned to see what Pagos might be like... and they never came back. Perhaps that will serve an eye opener for the sheer disdain people have towards Eureka and how it has panned out. Pyros could turn things around but it doesn't appear a good amount of people are willing to see it through on release day but maybe wait for word of mouth.

Either way, I'll be curious to see if those numbers climb come 4.5 or if the lack of content pushes even more away as we settle into the long six month drought thereafter.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tone_data_113/