No New MMO Yet From Square? Why Havent They Seized The Moment?

[Thurmnmurmn]

No one knows subscriber numbers and WoW doesn't separate sub numbers so WTF are you talking about. Player retention doesn't mean much when your game was at its LOWEST point after last expansion basically if they stayed through that disaster they probably aren't leaving, retail has a huge amount of raid loggers vs classic doesn't and classic seems to have a tighter community because of the nature of the game over retail. Both will have rises and falls but the biggest difference is retail can go play classic on top of retail, classic cannot play retail unless they buy the expansion. WoW forums pretty much is agreeance that classic is the more popular titles atm mainly due to its hardcore server being about 2 months old, now will it last probably not. Just like everything it iwll have huge influx slowly die off the level at a certain point.

You clearly haven't looked up anything about it recently.
Wow hardcore is tiny. There's a total of 2 servers in na for it and one of them isn't even high population. It just feels way more because it's popular for streamers/for entertainment.
Wrath of the Lich King has a much larger player base over classic (more servers that are just as full).
And those raid loggers you mentioned are where people get stats for wow retail. They look at raid clear %s.

[Colt47]

You clearly haven't looked up anything about it recently.
Wow hardcore is tiny. There's a total of 2 servers in na for it and one of them isn't even high population. It just feels way more because it's popular for streamers/for entertainment.
Wrath of the Lich King has a much larger player base over classic (more servers that are just as full).
And those raid loggers you mentioned are where people get stats for wow retail. They look at raid clear %s.

Yeah, its an issue with a lot of games and online communities. Warhammer 40k appears super competitive online, but in reality its a bunch of hobbyists buying kits they like and playing games with the base rules, often ignoring what-you-see-is-what-you-get for weapon loadouts because the rules change so frequently. FFXIV has a lot of content streamers doing hard content because it is fun to watch, but at the same time it just isn't that fun to play through it for the majority. Most people just do regular content because of the better flexibility in time commitment.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I agree with the people observing that traditional MMOs are in decline and FFXIV is still going too strong to consider dividing the playerbase with a new MMO. I could see them maybe in early development stages for a new MMO, but I don't think they will pull the trigger until they start seeing very clear declines in XIV participation.

But the other thing to really consider is the available design space and appeal of a new FF MMO. Not only is XIV extremely built out and in ways that will sustain easy future expansion, but conceptually the devs have nowhere to take a third MMO that would be marketable. A huge amount of XIV's success rests on nostalgia and referentiality; it incorporates nearly every successful element of every prior FF game. People don't play it solely for the story, and arguably most people play it for things like the classic bosses, Gold Saucer games, Yuna clothes and Lightning hairstyles.

The "all-in-one FF theme park" gimmick has already been done, and assuredly any FF MMO that does not feature references this heavily will wither and die. And the alternative option isn't promising either, because it would be extremely difficult for the devs to pull off "all the FF things" a second time without drawing direct and disfavorable comparisons to XIV ("oh they already did this in XIV", or "they did it better"). Like it or not, XIV is the ultimate FF experience and will be extremely difficult to follow up, to the point that it may not be worth considering.

FFXIV is by no means the only megafranchise with this problem. Nintendo is currently experiencing the same dilemma in the wake of Smash Bros Ultimate and Mario Kart 8. And like both of those games, I would sooner anticipate they just release more DLC and build on the "quintessential" experience, rather than risk starting from scratch on what wants to be effectively the same product anyway.

[yoshinoharu]

https://mmo-population.com/activity

Apparently everyone left to go play Baldur's Gate actually >.> So much so that it's considered an MMO in its own right, so uhh... I guess Larian Studios capitalized?

Edit: Too lazy to go back and quote the other guy on WoW Health, but there's something really sus about WoW retail having 130 million accounts with only a hundredth of that active >.>

[Mcg55ss]

You clearly haven't looked up anything about it recently.
Wow hardcore is tiny. There's a total of 2 servers in na for it and one of them isn't even high population. It just feels way more because it's popular for streamers/for entertainment.
Wrath of the Lich King has a much larger player base over classic (more servers that are just as full).
And those raid loggers you mentioned are where people get stats for wow retail. They look at raid clear %s.

if you look at raid clear % Shadowlands 1st tier has a TON more than current sooo.. again my 1st point stands retention at a certain point isn't hard if they stayed through shadowlands they probably aren't leaving anytime soon.

[LioJen]

I would love a new FF MMO just for the chance to see big changes that XIV will never see, but I can't see that happening while XIV is still profiting.

But they could add online co-op elements to the mainline games in the future. Think of Monster Hunter or PSO, a one-time purchase that you can play as a single player game, but you can also group up with other players to play the whole game with as well. The way they have made both XI and XIV mostly solo-able, I think maybe investing in the hybrid Offline-Online model would pay off.

[Thurmnmurmn]

if you look at raid clear % Shadowlands 1st tier has a TON more than current sooo.. again my 1st point stands retention at a certain point isn't hard if they stayed through shadowlands they probably aren't leaving anytime soon.

Shadowlands came out during the pandemic so those numbers are inflated anyways. And those number went down due to the wow exodus when they came over here because shadowlands sucked.
Why do you talk about retention? You're talking about the game population. We have no way of knowing if the players there are the same as the ones years ago.

And your initial point of all this was in your op when you said classic out populates retail, which just isn't true.

[Jeeqbit]

https://mmo-population.com/activity

That website is bogus. It was found they were using the reddit population as their source for activity for games, which is ridiculous and wrong. It was found to be saying games no longer in operation, are. It lost all its credibility by doing that.

Lucky Bancho is a much better source than that for this game.

there's something really sus about WoW retail having 130 million accounts with only a hundredth of that active >.>

No, there is not. FFXIV has over 20 million accounts and only 1/20th of it is active.

The 130 million is a pool. From that pool, a fraction of it is active. Should some of the active population unsubscribe, others in that pool may resubscribe and take their place. Now do you see?

That, is where Returners come from. That is why for all the people who claim they quit FFXIV, it is not noticed because they are replaced by Returners from the 20 million inactive accounts as well as brand new players.

[DiaDeem]

FF14 being built on the old Crystal Engine

Wrong.

[Mcg55ss]

Shadowlands came out during the pandemic so those numbers are inflated anyways. And those number went down due to the wow exodus when they came over here because shadowlands sucked.
Why do you talk about retention? You're talking about the game population. We have no way of knowing if the players there are the same as the ones years ago.

And your initial point of all this was in your op when you said classic out populates retail, which just isn't true.

and you have the numbers that even blizzard won't release to prove that???