The real reason there are even subscribers in 2024

[LianaThorne]

I disagree on the player population thing.
EW had the WoW people but DT surfed on the EW hype.
Long time will show if DT can stand on it’s on legs.

Other than that I agree.
FF14 will not die for the next several years and probably not even decline.
DT story sucks but many (me included for the foreseeable future) stay while being miffed about it because the rest is still good and many years of playtime were sunk into it.

The biggest thing is probably also that there is no real competition.
Wow can be big again but it has another target audience for a huge part and for me and quite a number of others is uninteresting because of art style and narrative alone.

Guild Wars maybe but I don’t know the status of it since I heard rumors of Guild Wars 3.

Personally I think the only ones who could become a danger right now would be Hoyoverse with the huge financial playroom they have would they develop an mmorpg.
But I don’t see that and if there is none they can exist peacefully besides FF14.

The worst thing for ff14 right now is that it can become widely known as mediocre.
If it has nothing anymore that makes it stand out than people might spent less in it. Less subscription (just waiting for expansions) less mog station and so on.

Hoyo wouldn't make an MMO, Tower of Fantasy proved that a gacha based MMO would not work well for a majority of people. Launch scandal aside it's not a fun concept in the long run as someone who does still semi-regularly play it, as you're basically required to get multiple copies of characters to even push large damage numbers. Feels weird in an MMO environment where gear/skill should ultimately be the defining factor of how strong you are, not how large your wallet is/how lucky you are.