What do you think will happen to a failed data center?

[Lustre]

Any talk of recently established worlds and DCs growing is just cope, xiv is well past its prime and there won't be another influx like the wow refugees again.

Theyll keep the dead worlds online just so they dont have to publicly admit to a bad decision.

[LianaThorne]

Any talk of recently established worlds and DCs growing is just cope, xiv is well past its prime and there won't be another influx like the wow refugees again.

Theyll keep the dead worlds online just so they dont have to publicly admit to a bad decision.

Debatable with how much traffic the game gets during major expansion launches. It's always quieter during the between periods between patches and patch population is not nearly as large as new expansion population (i.e. the people that come to do story and then leave afterwards). I'd expect to see a lot of returners and new people with the graphics update that is planned and the new QoL being added that people have been asking for. Will it be a WoW sized flood? Probably not and personally I think that's a good thing considering the only reason that happened was because of people doing some really shit things....so the less of that happening the better.

[Iscah]

I haven't yet had anywhere near enough trouble with queues to want the DC shut down or moved to another country.

[ironbutterfly]

I am getting tired of seeing OCE is dead.
Has it had it's issues. Yes. Is it dead and buried and we should give up? Not yet. It's not even a year old and you're trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. It's going to take time to grow so stop dragging it down.

[Stormpeaks]

I am getting tired of seeing OCE is dead.
Has it had it's issues. Yes. Is it dead and buried and we should give up? Not yet. It's not even a year old and you're trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. It's going to take time to grow so stop dragging it down.

it aint growing people are leaving, time to wake up

[DeNada]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

[PirateRyanG]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

People always say that WOW peaked at Lich King, when every expansion since (bar Mists) has outsold Lich King Day 1. WOW is making more money than ever before....

[Jojoya]

People always say that WOW peaked at Lich King, when every expansion since (bar Mists) has outsold Lich King Day 1. WOW is making more money than ever before....

Vanilla, BC, and Wrath didn't have digital download pre-orders with bonuses. Most players were still going into a store to buy a physical copy on or after release date though some would pre-order their box copy through Amazon or their local game store.

The expansions from Cataclysm on did. That encouraged more players to pre-order for the sake of getting the bonuses, boosting day one sales totals (since the pre-orders couldn't be claimed as sales until release date).

Considering the subscription price hasn't changed between then and now, subscription revenues are way down and expansion price only brings in 1/3 of what an annual subscription does. They're certainly not making money there when the current player base is estimated to be in the 3-4 million range with a large portion of those only playing Classic.

Are cash shop and character service transactions increasing their revenues beyond what they were making back in 2010? Don't know. Certainly they have a ton more items on their cash shop than existed back then and character service transaction were booming for a while though I don't know how much are getting used anymore.

Honestly, there's no way to tell whether this game has peaked yet. We'll need to wait and see the long term response to the new story arc being introduced in 6.5.

[NekoMataMata]

Truth to be told, it's not just OCE. Every worlds out there have been shedding players since Endwalker release, and have continued to do so even with new patch releases.

I feel that with the FFXIV has peaked at Endwalker with the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc (one can draw parallels to the release of Wrath of the Lich King back in 2008 for WoW) and it's just downhill from now onwards, which makes the release of new data centers and worlds even more confusing as it's just going to split the already declining player base even further.

I don't know enough about WoW to make any kind of judgement on it, but I think there's a lot of factors to take into consideration like the ones Jojoya mentioned.

Besides that, I think video games of any kind are super seasonal now. People play games when they're hyped up/brand new and then forget about them later. Even single player games suffer from this. There's no retention with playing games I feel. People who play something on day one of its release may not play throughout the existence of the game.

SE probably has accurate stats, but it's also probably fluffed a little bit.