Quote Originally Posted by Aravell View Post
They can't show you any receipts because there are none. Population growth cannot be directly attributed to one thing and one thing only. That's why when asked this question, people can only reply with "Shadowbringers and Endwalker has more players than Stormblood" and refuse to elaborate further.

Surely it has to be the simplified jobs that bring in the players, right? Surely it can't be that Shadowbringers has the most hyped story after the expansion that many regards as having the weakest story. Surely it can't be that Endwalker is the climax of a multi-year long epic saga that many want to see to the end. Surely Dawntrail won't do well because of the graphical update and other major QoL stuff. No, it has to be entirely the simplified jobs!
The one flaw I can see with this logic is that new players didn't experience the story leading up to Endwalker when they decided to buy it. A lot of the people who decided to try it probably just decided to try it because it became a common exodus location after Blizzard debacles. That's clearly not every player who decided to try ShB or EW during the spike, but it's got to be a lot of them.