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

[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....

[FireMage]

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 trust you have data to back this up?

[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.

[Larirawiel]

I do not think, that a datacenter will fail. The point is, there is a big content dull for many people. Even some bigger streamers stopped playing FF14 because of this.


Cheers

[LianaThorne]

I do not think, that a datacenter will fail. The point is, there is a big content dull for many people. Even some bigger streamers stopped playing FF14 because of this.


Cheers

Pretty much this.

Unless someone is a roleplayer, prepping for 6.3 or going through MSQ for the first time/again on an alt, they're most likely not playing right now and haven't been since 6.2/6.25 launch. I think a lot underestimate how many play strictly for story and then dip out till the next story-related patch launches. Low pop is always a thing, especially if the patches themselves aren't giving enough content to keep all playstyles engaged for months at a time.

[rainichan]

I do not think, that a datacenter will fail. The point is, there is a big content dull for many people. Even some bigger streamers stopped playing FF14 because of this.


Cheers

Yep, numbers always drop during patch content lulls. It's why devs try to squeeze out the time needed to complete things, otherwise people would complete them in a day and then bounce for another 4 months while complaining that everything they wanted to do was too easy to complete :P Instead we get the inverse of "it takes too long to get gear" which is the entire point lmao. Some people truly don't care and will do it at the end of the patches before xpacs drop to be ready for the xpac, others just complete everything during xpac drop to not have to be in the crowded areas and will take their time to catch up before taking a two-year long break after beating the vanilla x.0 patch. There are plenty of people who continue to play between then, working on achievements they want to do or working at their own pace at leveling things. Numbers will (and historically have) dip down and then surge again when new content hits that people are interested in. Plenty of people just do Savage and Ultimate fights and once they're done progging/farming them, they leave until the next set comes out. That's a healthy thing to do, as is just taking short breaks - I'm doing that myself while staying on low maint mode and logging in for Cactpot, Island stuff, and the occasional maps with friends or something, and I'm playing FFXI for a bit with some other games in between.

People coming back may be unhappy with how crowded their server is and move to the other DCs. People who are still playing may become unhappy with how crowded their server is with people coming back and move to the new DC. They don't just fill up to max capacity overnight, it will always take time. There were a LOT of people who didn't want to move to the EU servers after they got set up and they were pretty desolate for a while. Now they've got a new DC too with new servers. The more people in OCE start playing or moving, it'll start filling up - bonus points if SE opens up SEA to them too or something, that'd help a lot I imagine! Same with the new NA DC, it'll start filling with new players and old players alike and there's always incentives to move for people interested or already on the fence on if they should move.

[Raoabolic]

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 would actually draw parallels to the story of Shadowlands. The story felt like a brand new character they introduced suddenly is the big bad guy, the story they were building towards felt like it was hand waved away for all these new characters, and if we are going to go beyond story then we have to think of the "facebook waiting games" that each expansion brought (garrisons/Island sancturary). EW was a lot of things but it wasn't this game's Wrath of the Lich King.

[dspguy]

I don't think we'll see them shut down a data center or even combine them. Think about the madness that was EW release. They flat-out stopped selling the game to protect the playerbase they did have. Even if new players or just expansion-release players only play the expansion for 3-6 months, that's roughly 9-12 months worth of subscription (purchase price plus a few months of subscription). If they can keep servers humming and the money coming in, they'll deal with some slow data centers in-between expansions.