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Considering FF14 is a great casual/social MMO, it does not surprise me at all that half the playerbase has not cleared the MSQ. They can have a ton of fun just RPing or doing random stuff with their FC, and that's great.
A few points you didn't cover that may explain the oddities of Stormblood patches and 5.3 drop:
– Stormblood is generally regarded as a disappointment in terms of story but noone can deny the amount of QoL it brought. That's when the job gauges were introduced and many jobs got their "signature" moves. Additionally Stormblood had Omega, Ivalice and first two Ultimates. Each one of those I think really sold the endgame content for every players niche.
– On the other hand patch 5.3 was delayed by a lot because of the pandemic. This is why 5.2 was probably the worst content drought so far and not everyone returned in 5.3.
On the subject of HW numbers – I know a decent number of people who came from WoW to play HW during WoD and they absolutely hated how slow the combat felt. To the point now when I talk to them about FFXIV, they still think about the game in terms of HW and think I'm bullshitting about the game getting much snappier from Stormblood onward.
EDIT: Also the 5.3 numbers are not surprising. The content drought from the delay between 5.2 and 5.3 (which was like six months) was agonizing and I know a lot of people who left the game during the summer to play other stuff and didn't end up coming back until the end of expansion.
Was it Mat?
Free trial has alot to do with numbers increase in ShB, since many came to try expanded trial and buy in quickly. Old trial was just to level 35 or so, which wasnt enough to get full idea. SE might give SB for free in future, but it probably wont have same effect, since trialist is probably already decided at that point.
Content wise, SB had so much to offer. Twitania, Susano, Byako, Omega raids, Mhachi raids. But most importantly, improved graphics compared to PS3 era that can make poor first impression. Still, to get to SB takes new player alot of hours, so he should be already know at that point if he likes this game or not, to even see it.
Just wondering what effect making to world servers had on new characters?
The first graphs definitely match up with my anecdotal feelings about the game. During HW and SB, the game was still relatively overlooked, just "that weeb game", no one really paid much attention to it. We all know what happened with Shadowbringers obviously, but it definitely felt like playing one of the unknown MMOs at the time, behind WoW and whatever the latest "WoW killer of the month" was.
I don't think there was any one thing that made the game explode in popularity, it felt like a perfect storm of good marketing, good social media presence and getting some of the big names from Twitch talking positively about it (and the legions of fanatics that copy their opinions verbatim).
"This data point came about two weeks after Asmongold started playing…"
It took us WoW trogglodites a while to figure out how to navigate the Mogstation and buy the game.
I quit before Heavensward. I popped back in for Welcome back campaign's, buy I wasn't into it and never subbed. I only returned for EW. I'd never heard of Asmongold, but I'd met people in other games who were playing ffxiv. So I returned after 7 year hiatus.
You can say asmongold is trash at his content, or hate on him. But if you're an FFXIV player and longing for more content you should be thankful for him since he single handedly boosted the population unreasonably. I like him, humble relatable guy, unlike any other streamer/youtubers that started poor as fuck but then grew and just flex their shit on their viewerbase. Asmongold is just the same person and feels pretty genuine. He is millionaire and he is still living in poorer conditions than me and doesn't give a damn, there is something oddly unique about it.
I don't think its fair to credit asmongold with the exodus. There were a number of other streamers who were quitting wow and trying ff14 before asmon tried it. Yea sure asmon is the biggest of them but really he didn't start the bandwagon he just jumped on and pushed it faster.
the msq is smooth when you do it from the begging to endwalker it all fits and not like years between expansions its great.
11:50 i started playing a few months before endwalker release and i still havent even reached endwalker yet. there is just so much other stuff to do LOL
Something else to take into account is I believe a lot of players with alts are similar to me where they rarely would even be counted in the survey since they are rarely active on those characters.
The reasoning for alts has historically been limited to playing with friends on other data centers and raiding with multiple groups without sacrificing loot.
With data center travel, it is likely that the percentage of alts that are active drops as well.
Great video
With my FC it kind of supports some of this – we've got a bunch of people returning from leaving at the end of SHB around when most companies got people back from working from home or just out of lockdowns AND even those that have played almost every month since before Endwalker 2 of our officers and I'd say 60% of our members are on SB or early ShB but they enjoy the game with the old raids/dungeons/content and more =) It's amazing 😀 (Many especially the officers have level 90s already one had two level 90s and hadn't even completed Heavensward cause she dungeons with the FC so much XD
Returnning players says a lot, it means that players actually like the game but took a break due to various reasons.
When I think about WOW, so many players permanently quit, Those players will never return and most likely are now playing FFXIV if they are still looking for a good MMO.
Been playing since 1.0 in 2010. I take a multi month leave from the game at least once a year, come back for big patches and expansion launches, which is the exact same thing I did with FF11 starting in 2002, and WOW starting in 2004.
For the longest time I was playing FF11, then stopped for a bit and went to WoW, stopped and back to FF11, back and forth until around 2010 when I quit FF11 for good at the start of FF14.
The thing is, I always come back after a hiatus, but lately I’ve been playing single player games instead of WOW during my downtime from FF14 (hard to find the desire to log into that game for years now).
I’ll be definitely resubbing soon to get ready for FF14’s new Animal Crossing Stardew Valley island content next month. I think it might be one of the biggest surges in activity to date when that patch drops.
Remember the other MMOs that have starting cities and they are empty?…
Yeah…
In FFXIV:ARR there are ALWAYS TONS OF players in every city xD Cant have some privacy these days xD
I just started playing in January of this year. Out of sheer boredom and nothing else. I've been burned out on every MMO I've ever played, and I've tested and played a lot.
I love the game and it keeps me very interested, and after watching this video, I now have a firm theory on the multiple classes on one toon thing going on. I really don't like it, but in some ways I love it. It breeds sloppiness in playing and for most players, they never truly learn their class or roll in a party. This is all based on over 20 years of playing MMOs and decades of playing D&D.
I'm going to tell you why people don't finish the MSQ and I will be blunt as I'm researching it for an article on what may be FFXIV's eventual downfall. Most people who play have personality types that lean into one of the three "types" of categories, the Tank, The Healer, or DPS. People who love just going and bashing the hell out of things, natural leaders, tend to gravitate, in most games they play, towards the tank model of FPS almost exclusively. There are the Finger Wagglers, or pure casters, who are basically huge damage dealers AKA Glass cannons. Then there are the "helpers" who do tons of damage per second (DPS) while not taking agro from the tank. Healers are pure casters; However, FFXIV gave them the ability to do some damage, without costing them anything in healing power (WoW Shadow Priests, I'm looking at you). Your personality will lead you to the type of class you like to play.
I love pure casting. In EQ I played a wizard (taxi driver for most of the game), and I dual boxed a cleric. In WoW I played a Fire Mage all the way through, and I played a Holy Priest and a Healadin. My Paladin could also fight and basically ruined when they stole her Nax shield and then nerfed the class by taking away their auras. She still kicked ass and I miss her. She outhealed my Priest. I tried on other different class in those games, but the finger wagglers stuck. For others it's the hitting things type that draws them in. It's how you get Prot Paladins.
Here's the thing. Starting in Shadowbringers, in the MSQ, you MUST play as one of the other Scions, with only a handful of their abilities and no real knowledge of how to effectively use them if you don't play that class. It stopped me cold trying to play a gun breaker with steal abilities (WTF?). I am thrown into this with no knowledge or history of playing this type of thing and I hated it. Actively. Then it comes at you time and against after that. I won't go into my 18 tries to play Estinien until I finally begged my husband to do it for me. He plays a dragoon and hated the experience as well. I am again on a very long hiatus from MSQ play because Zenos stole my body and I am supposed to sneak around until I find my way out of a maze fill with zombies. A) I hate zombies, stop doing that, B) You have no abilities and have to find healing potions if you get into a fight; and C) There is no explanation given in game as to why you're there, what you're supposed to even be looking for, and no real idea that you've found it after coming up dry everywhere else. I've watched 5 videos on this portion alone with every single person playing, without exception, screaming at the screen, "Why am I even doing this?"
I've yet to talk to one person who liked these portions of game play. Tanks don't like playing Urianger, casters don't like playing Thancred. I dont' want to play an NPC. I want to play the character I've worked hard to learn and hone in the hours I've played. Don't even bring up Tower of Zot. I still have nightmares.
Heavensward is fantastic today but it was pretty awkward then. Fantastic story aside, the patches didn't have much to offer, raiding was in a really bad spot and overall, it just didn't feel that great to be around.
3.1 brought Diadem, which looked great at first, but pretty much ended up being a disaster. Dropped gear with random stats that could end up being better than raid gear, was super boring and very chaotic to grind in, people weren't happy. Besides that, there really only was Thordan Extreme, which was an amazing trial, but after you've done it 100 times, it can't jeep you entertained anymore.
What I did in 3.1 and jusging by the activity then many did was PvP, queues were fast. Also finally decided to level all my gatherers and crafters, even tho I really wasn't interested in this stuff since 2.5 when I started playing.
I'll maintain my stance that 3.1 was the worst patch the game had, I did take a break for a while then but it was for a different reason, didn't have much to do with the state of the game.
So yeah, these numbers make sense really.
Soo.. Asmongold and Osborne effects might be related… 😀
the only thing really really good about the game is the story. Gameplay wise it's completly trash. it's not an mmo in any stretch of the imagination. im in endwalker now and sure i've seen alot of people stand around in cities, but the times i've had any kind of meaningful interaction can be counted on my two hands. People don't want to talk to you in dungeons as they are "busy" unless you ask a critically important question to understand and finish the dungeon. and when you try to talk to people in cities, it's like 1/10 chance that they aren't afk. and the 10% of them that do answer bring very shallow conversation.
This is a Singleplayer RPG with multiplayer capabilities at best.
They pretty much lost me in Shadowbringers. I got tired of the continual new tier of crafting things same as the old tier, but with some new made up materials, rather than making more complex crafting things. This was a complaint I had against WoW as well. I also got tired of them stripping away aspects of the character classes and dumbing them down. I think another huge problem is not having enough to do to advance non-main character classes other than endless roulettes. Additionally, the people I play with just got too far out ahead of me in the storyline. About halfway through, I reached max level with my main class, but none of my other classes were high enough to work on the MSQ, and I didn't want to "waste all that XP" on a class that couldn't take it. I finally got to the point where I was just doing it to get there, and it wasn't any fun any more.
I should mention I'm usually fairly unimpressed by the MSQ and endless cutscenes as well. The fact that core advancement requires all that is also a negative IMHO.
probably the growth came from wow exodus
I bet Blizzard will stop sending those condescending 'congratulations' cards to the FFXIV staff, now that they've had to take notes from them 🤣
I don't think anyone that's been playing the game long enough would be too surprised to see that HW was the low point as far as player count goes. The game was way smaller back then. Not because it was bad or anything, I mean it was HW, just not as many people had heard of it and the people that did had probably heard about 1.0 and didn't wanna risk it.
Hi! Slowing making my way through. On Stormblood lol
r u a wizurd