Are the 70% of the playerbase that quit even coming back for DAWNTRAIL?

[AnimalsALot]

Just half a year after EW launch, we lost 70% of the playerbase.



Oh but surely they'll come back before the expansion! Wait...





"You're wrong!! People only come back right at the expansion launch!" Wait...



What's this? Player count reached 42k a month before EW launch?

"But Steam only represents 15% of the community!!"

And trends in one subset of the data should reflect trends in the entire data

[MagiusNecros]

I stopped playing at 6.2. Popped in for 2 days for Blue Mage Update and am returning for Dawntrail. I think the continuation of MSQ and the new classes will draw players in temporarily before it drops off again given that most of the changes for this expansion don't really extend past "graphical upgrade".

[NegativeS]

Endwalker launched in December 2021, which was firmly in the middle of World of Warcraft's mid-Shadowlands implosion (Their patch 9.1.5 actually released at the start of November with not a lick of content to be seen). Pretty much every MMO got a glut of players as a result of this.



FFXIV was probably the most standout because their messianic figure Asmongold was giving FFXIV a lot of attention at the time, which is huge for any game.

WoW is currently in a somewhat better state than it was then, and also has an expansion release coming in the next two or three months, so it's players don't have a need to hurriedly jump ship anymore. You didn't lose 70% of the 'playerbase', you lost all the FOTM-andys who realized they didn't actually like FFXIV and went to go play New World or something equally as stupid while they waited for Blizzard to fix their game (still to be seen).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

TitanMen is out in force today I see.
You'll never quit because of your rmt business, but it'd be great if you did.

[AlucaDragonheart]

Homogenize the classes even more, I'm sure that'll bring them back!

[Jeeqbit]

All those arguments being the case, the player spike that happened just prior to Endwalker was temporary because the game was going viral, so naturally it dropped off. The game did grow with Endwalker release as compared with Shadowbringers and more so than normal due to it going viral and the WoW stuff, but a large portion of the spike obviously dropped off because some of those players didn't stick around or were variety gamers.

Another factor is the congestion issues and the stopping of sales of the game artificially pushed people away who wanted to play and some of them put it off months or 1-2 years (based on interactions I've had).

As for if they will come back, the ones who got deep enough into the game usually will someday even if they claim they won't (similar to how people always go back to WoW after all the stuff they said about it). The "30 million adventurers" is a pool (obviously some of which are bots ), so any individual one of them could resubscribe at a given moment to do the one-and-done content then unsubscribe.

And honestly, if a lot of salty veterans quit because the game isn't like it was back in their day, maybe that will reduce (or have reduced) the degree of overall growth, but there are an awful lot of people who started the game since who are much more content with things, so it'll likely still grow but just less due to the people who quit.

SE actually said that Dawntrail pre-orders broke all their previous records from what I recall.

[Kaurhz]

Eh some of these factors are not necessarily down the state of this game, but the state of other games at the time. E.g., the player count just prior to EW had a lot to do with the WoW exodus, and some of the streamers from that side that it attracted, just as much as what it did with the actual state of this game. I would argue a large drop in the numbers was also partially down to this.

I am not saying it is the only reason. But it is a pretty big reason.

[AnimalsALot]

Eh some of these factors are not necessarily down the state of this game, but the state of other games at the time. E.g., the player count just prior to EW had a lot to do with the WoW exodus, and some of the streamers from that side that it attracted, just as much as what it did with the actual state of this game. I would argue a large drop in the numbers was also partially down to this.

I am not saying it is the only reason. But it is a pretty big reason.

Of course the WoW exodus was the principal factor, if not the only major factor.

But is that really the low standards that FF14 players now have for the game? Is it a source of pride for Square Enix to have not been able to capture the vast majority of those WoWfugees? To just let them slip away? Is it a good thing to be handed a golden goose laying golden eggs only for the goose to be so dissatisfied that it ran away in the night?

[NegativeS]

But is that really the low standards that FF14 players now have for the game? Is it a source of pride for Square Enix to have not been able to capture the vast majority of those WoWfugees? To just let them slip away? Is it a good thing to be handed a golden goose laying golden eggs only for the goose to be so dissatisfied that it ran away in the night?

WoW players are unique in that someone who plays WoW is more likely than not to only play WoW, or at least have it as their primary game. That's the kind of audience that they've cultivated over the years... and the type of audience to still play WoW in its current state. Going on 10 (EDIT: Actually 20, I don't know why my brain thought 2004 was 10 years ago...) years of updates, the sunk cost for some of them is probably so high, it would be actually physically dangerous for them to quit.

Late 2021 was unique because it was in the middle of arguably the worst expansion to come out for WoW, so those who only played it had nothing to do, and those who had it as their primary game were looking for other MMOs to pass the time. This is no longer the case, as not only is Dragonflight a much better expansion in terms of content density and quality (relative to Shadowlands, anyway), but they're currently in the alpha/beta cycle for a new expansion. Those WoW players are staying firmly where they are.

People like me, who decided to stick with XIV after November 2021, never left. Everyone else isn't coming back, at no fault of FFXIV.

Source: Played WoW for half a decade straight

[Kaurhz]

Of course the WoW exodus was the principal factor, if not the only major factor.

But is that really the low standards that FF14 players now have for the game? Is it a source of pride for Square Enix to have not been able to capture the vast majority of those WoWfugees? To just let them slip away? Is it a good thing to be handed a golden goose laying golden eggs only for the goose to be so dissatisfied that it ran away in the night?

I mean not that I disagree with that in premise, but I don't think anyone really anticipated it way in advance to actually do anything meaningful with it to actually retain them, especially when it wasn't this game in the first place that enticed them. MMOs generally are in a pretty bad state. I've tried going back to RS many a time, tried WoW on a few occasions and I still come back here. Same thing for WoW players, really, or other players that try migrating to another game. Many of them will have tried the game for themselves and then just dipped out, and a great many will have joined the game because of their favorite streamer, and will have left when they did, so arguably a lot of them weren't even here because of the game but because of who came over to it, but of course this latter part is just me speculating.

If they wanted to actually capture a vast majority of those players then they would need to do an extreme amount of work to the earlier game to actually help them stay interested along the journey. Sure, they can skip the game, but that's not always within everyones budget, and generally speaking XIV is a game with an utterly tragic early-experience. If people join en-masse then they are also going to leave en-masse when they realize there's a good 60 hours minimum of actual in-game play-time before they can even get the same level of satisfaction. This is a massive undertaking anyway, especially if you're coming here from a source of dissatisfaction from another game.

It was only ever going to land one-way, and I don't think anyone got any pride out of it, except those that are on the possessive "Stay out of my(our) game¬!" personality.