FFXIV Population this small really? wtf?

[KageTokage]

I know that, but it doesn't change the fact that the number is horribly skewed due to them including RMT bots in the figure.

Or at least I'm assuming that's the case because I seriously doubt the player base has actually increased by four million since Stormblood dropped (The ads just prior to its release were claiming 10 million players).

[AdamChattaway]

It's also worth noting that a lot of European players - such as myself - choose to play on the NA servers.

Why is that? the timezones would be that far out raiding must be hard? working when they sleep and sleeping when they are in prime time etc?

[Vrankyl]

Those numbers are so far off from accurate that it isn't even funny. Balmung alone would account for half the world's population if their overall active number was right. Balmung sits at about 18-20k active characters according to Lucky Bancho and had peaked well over that before SE stepped in and said enough is enough. As everyone else stated if you want a more accurate count Lucky Bancho is the only real place for it, and even then it isn't accurate because you can hide your lodestone data so these censuses would skip over such players. On average it's agreed that the active sub count is probably somewhere between 500k and 800k as it has been for a long while.

It kind of bugs me that they make claims about the game having 14 million players when only around 2-3% of that figure actively plays the game and 80-90% of it are just RMT accounts that have long since been banned.

All MMOs do this, WoW is just as bad. They flash the fact that they have over 100 million registered accounts, but the active sub count is stated to possibly be even lower than 2 mil now.

[noxen]

It's marketing. They can use whatever figures they want, including adding RMT accounts to that figure, if it garners attention for the game and gets the investors more money... As vile as it is to say that.

[Noodle_Trinidad]

I know that, but it doesn't change the fact that the number is horribly skewed due to them including RMT bots in the figure.

Or at least I'm assuming that's the case because I seriously doubt the player base has actually increased by four million since Stormblood dropped (The ads just prior to its release were claiming 10 million players).

The 14 Million count is accounts registered and played once at the very least. Its the same as Overwatch’s “Heroes answered the Call” campaign where they claim absurd numbers that did not reflect the actual active playercount.

Personally I wouldn’t be surprised to see active counts capping off at around 400k for FFXIV given the negative view Modern MMOs tend to have. No company will ever show their active subs anymore as both WoW and Destiny 2 have shown since Companies will fear people twisting these numbers for their narrative alongside shareholders and potential players reacting to it.

[Kurando]

Why is that? the timezones would be that far out raiding must be hard? working when they sleep and sleeping when they are in prime time etc?

Originally there were no EU worlds and so a lot of Europeans built a home in the NA centres when the game first started, with quite a few choosing to stay there even after all this time. Also some players create mains or alts on different centres for many reasons. Raiding is never really that big of an issue, roughly 5-8hrs difference (between NA and EU) is nothing that major, plus that's why there is the Party Finder and Discords for such things, where there is a will there is a way.

[Theodric]

Why is that? the timezones would be that far out raiding must be hard? working when they sleep and sleeping when they are in prime time etc?

Back in ARR, the EU and NA servers were located in Canada. A portion of European players decided to invest in the US servers since there wasn't any real difference at that point and many stayed due to friends even after EU servers were moved closer to home. That aside, as a night owl I'm granted a lot more opportunities to do things in-game since during the very early hours of the night when I play the EU servers are very, very quiet.

[Taebok]

It kind of bugs me that they make claims about the game having 14 million players when only around 2-3% of that figure actively plays the game and 80-90% of it are just RMT accounts that have long since been banned.

Just like Facebook claiming to have two billion users when 75% of those are fake accounts, and another 20% are people who have multiple accounts for whatever devious reasons they have.
Technology companies know this, but they only care about numbers they can point to.

[Nedkel]

This site is broken and probably the guy behind it just gave up and stopped doing it all together.

[Wind-Krysvein]

Why on earth would you necropost this just to make some conjectural point about "there being no new players in the game because housing areas"?

You do realize that these new players you talk about rarely touch the housing areas, or anything housing related for that matter, until they're at a financial point where they can actually afford the feature? Yeesh.