The split might just have killed this game for me

[Duroy]

The party finder is mostly dead in week days, even between 5 and 7pm. The few parties which exist take hours to fill and when they do, it's often a trap because the lack of parties encourages people to join existing parties even if they don't fit the description...

If this game can only be played during the peak hours of the week end is it even worth it to stay subscribed at this point?

It's my first extension, so maybe I'm missing something: do you guys usually unsubscribe at the end of an expansion because of the lack of people playing?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

There are a lot of people who take breaks towards the end of expansions, as no new content comes out and they feel they are done and it's a good time to take a break. Has happened every expansion so far.

[Yawnie]

Yeah, a lot of people tend to not sub when a new expansion is around the corner. It’s typically a few months without any new content besides the occasional event. As soon as Shadowbringers drops you can expect a flood of people

[Malzian]

5.0 launch day login queues... Please look forward to it, hai.

[Tsukino]

Some people do stop subscribing, yes, while many just continue paying but don't log in much or join any duty finder queues for various reasons.

People run out of things to do in the game and even the best items you can get now will be quickly invalidated upon the release of an expansion. Even as soon as the expansion does come out, you may have some difficulty getting into older dungeons and such, as people want to do all the new ones just released. A couple weeks later though, the roulettes will be filled again.

[Duroy]

5.0 launch day login queues... Please look forward to it, hai.

I do actually, FFXIV is my first MMO and I've only been 70 since february, so I don't know the feeling of discovering a brand new expansion, I'm looking forward to it. I guess I'll just have to treat this game like I treat vacations: on and off depending on seasons...

[Akonyl]

People stopping during lulls between expansions isn't a uniquely FFXIV thing either, the wait between Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor was pretty bad too.

But yeah, don't worry too much about things just because PF's dead right now.

[Sated]

A lot of players tend to exhaust content in bursts - there's a definite flurry of activity with each new patch but ultimately a lot of people take breaks between expansions and things slow down in between.

There are people like me who play all the time regardless of where devs are on the content cycle, but I don't do roulette so I'm not exactly helping your queue, either.

[Coltvoyance]

I definitely wouldn't judge the games population numbers based on these last few months. The game gets positively DEAD prior to an expansion. And why not? Right now there's nothing to look forward to until then. With the XV crossover having arrived, all content for the game is set until Shadowbringers drops... in exactly 75 days; or 70 days if you have early access. It's a staggeringly long time....

My advice is to use the time to try and level other classes (I myself have finally gotten around to finishing off Black Mage). Come the expansion, you'll be thankful for the server split when you can still get in and you hear about other servers struggling with 20 minute queues.

[Penthea]

I do actually, FFXIV is my first MMO

Many players tend to take breaks towards the end of a raid tier, and towards the end of an expansion. Right now it's both, so it's normal that there are less around than usual.

Even those who are still stubbed may have lost interest in raiding because getting raid gear now will not help with the next raiding tier, because that will be in the new expansion. All that ilvl 400 gear will get replaced long before you hit lvl 80 in Shadowbringers. This alone is enough reason for a lot of people to take a break from raiding.

Also the split happened around when the tier unlocked, which for many indicates the end of the raiding tier so they will stop raiding as well. This makes the split appear worse than it actually is.

And in general, this late into the expansion most players will have finished what they wanted to do. They may still be subbed but they would often be taking a more chilled out approach to the game.

In short, things are quiet right now for perfectly normal reasons. This happens in every mmo. It will pick up again in Shadowbringers, when there is lots of new content to play.