Why does Square-Enix not sell subs for gil?

[Deveryn]

Who cares if people buy carries? They're as meaningless as the gil.

[Zebraoracle]

It's another episode of "I don't know who to cheer for, OP or the guy he's arguing with".

[Aurikai]

Gold sellers in WoW didn't die from a token, they died from Blizzard's hardline stance on bots used to generate gold, Warden was heavily upgraded during WoD because of garrisons, in addition Blizzard legally went after the two largest bot makers and shut them down, they continue to invest in Warden and prosecute gold sellers.

FFXIV has no such system, probably never will due to Japanese privacy concerns, further ALL of their addons are OUTSIDE of the game, meaning they read/manipulate the game's memory/network traffic to work, which is exactly what bots do, so it would be hard for an anti-cheat mechanism not to flag them, unlike with WoW where all addons run against in game LUA engine.

SE would have to sell gold dirt cheap to undermine bots which would probably destroy the economy, in addition the token would allow bot operators to buy throw away accounts to make botting even easier, again because there are no prevention against it, other than player reports which are slow and almost worthless.

[Ralphe2449]

Who cares if people buy carries? They're as meaningless as the gil.

That is a positive aspect of the wow token, it has hurt the elitists whose self worth depends on video game achievements because now anyone can have X gear/mount an they cant feel like they are special anymore in life

Truly hilarious, though on a more serious note, WoW token was absolutely predatory,
WoW has less players but I am certain it is more profitable than ff14 because WoW token based design pushes people to buy tokens and give more money to the company
Oh you have a new main? Well you better buy boosts to get them geared up quickly because nobody is doing low m+ or inviting low geared characters
Oh you want a new tier 4 or high ilvl crafted gear? You better buy a token if you want to afford it
Oh you are a casual who just plays solo and doesnt want to spend 10 days grinding for a worthless ilvl 220 gear piece when you can get an ilvl 256 from a single m+ boost? Just buy a token and get a boost.
Oh you want that mount/cosmetic that is only available through X raid that is filled with metaslaves and unpleasant tryhards? Just buy a token to buy a boost.
and more

[PirateRyanG]

That is a positive aspect of the wow token, it has hurt the elitists whose self worth depends on video game achievements because now anyone can have X gear/mount an they cant feel like they are special anymore in life

Truly hilarious, though on a more serious note, WoW token was absolutely predatory,
WoW has less players but I am certain it is more profitable than ff14 because WoW token based design pushes people to buy tokens and give more money to the company
Oh you have a new main? Well you better buy boosts to get them geared up quickly because nobody is doing low m+ or inviting low geared characters
Oh you want a new tier 4 or high ilvl crafted gear? You better buy a token if you want to afford it
Oh you are a casual who just plays solo and doesnt want to spend 10 days grinding for a worthless ilvl 220 gear piece when you can get an ilvl 256 from a single m+ boost? Just buy a token and get a boost.
Oh you want that mount/cosmetic that is only available through X raid that is filled with metaslaves and unpleasant tryhards? Just buy a token to buy a boost.
and more

WOW likely has more players than FF14. From what I can recall, one person said that FF14 had more players and everybody just rolled with it. Even if FF14 did top WOW at one stage, it was temporary. Content production for FF14 has pretty much dried up, while WOW is going through a resurgence (and not just because of the new expansion).

[Ralphe2449]

WOW likely has more players than FF14. From what I can recall, one person said that FF14 had more players and everybody just rolled with it. Even if FF14 did top WOW at one stage, it was temporary. Content production for FF14 has pretty much dried up, while WOW is going through a resurgence (and not just because of the new expansion).

FF14 is considered the top mmo these days even outside mmo circles

Though anyone thinking WoW will have a resurgence are fine to believe whatever they want, their new xpac is gonna be a hilarious disaster with nothing to do but raidlog so I am sure casuals will stay because *checks notes* "flying" is a feature xD

[Thaciscokidd]

You two are splitting hairs. We have no way to know who has the biggest population without anything official word from Corp SE and Actiblizz.

If we go by the thing that people used to declare ff14 #1 in the first place, it currently has it at #3 behind OSRS and WoW with classic at 4th and that site has always be unreliable at best.

[PirateRyanG]

FF14 is considered the top mmo these days even outside mmo circles

Though anyone thinking WoW will have a resurgence are fine to believe whatever they want, their new xpac is gonna be a hilarious disaster with nothing to do but raidlog so I am sure casuals will stay because *checks notes* "flying" is a feature xD

Every WOW expansion pack has outsold the previous one, bar Mists of Pandaria on the first day of sales.

There is absolutely no doubt that the next expansion will do the same.

Based on sales of expansions, WOW has a pretty stable player base between 3.4 and 3.7 million. Cataclysm sold 3.3 million and Shadowlands sold 3.7-million, which is where that comes from.

That is just people buying on the first day. We would have to ignore the people that buy later on, although I expect those figures to be a fraction since most people aim to get expansions for any regular MMO they play on release.

Mists of Pandaria outsold Burning Crusade but undersold Lich King by 100,000 copies.

The game is in an incredibly healthy position considering it is 18 years old. I see no reason why the trend of the expansion pack sales won't continue with Dragonflight. Would be odd if it suddenly dropped since it never has before (bar Mists)

Source:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...on-pack-sales/

[Stormpeaks]

FF14 is considered the top mmo these days even outside mmo circles

Though anyone thinking WoW will have a resurgence are fine to believe whatever they want, their new xpac is gonna be a hilarious disaster with nothing to do but raidlog so I am sure casuals will stay because *checks notes* "flying" is a feature xD

idk about that one chief

[Bukachu]

This turned WoW into boost hell, no thanks, I'm happier with gil being literally meaningless.

ffxiv has same amount of raid boost selling as wow does, comming from someone who has boosted A LOT (and I mean A LOOOT) in wow, and who has contacts in those circles. few of my friends who I boosted with in WoW, boost in FFxiv.

only reason wow may appear as having more boosts is due to nature of its content, mainly Mythic plus, but as far as raids go both game are on equal level.

on top of that, you can use gold to covert it into Battle net balance which you can then use to buy other bnet/activision games and items in those games, I had so much gold at the end of BfA and start of SL that I was buying 50 box packs in overwatch and hearthstone just with gold, not to mention other actiblizz games.

in ff most of boosting happens with real money, behind closed doors, but there's certain amount of boosting for gil as well.