FFXIV is a completely different experience than what WoW Provides either in retail or in whatever the hell nightmare Classic TBC is supposed to be. It is precisely because it provides a different experience that people are migrating to it.
You can’t help that people are starting to get sick of the relentless efforts to min-max meta every aspect of WoW and are looking for something different, especially when Blizzard make no effort to improve the situation and cater their development efforts entirely to please one group of people.
A Realm Reborn came out on 24 August 2013 and it’s popularity has steadily increased, Each expansion has been incredibly well received and it’s community is growing steadily and is extremely stable population-wise.
Yes because every FF14 expansion was an improvement and the game kept growing its playerbase steadily. As it normally should be.
Every wow expansion after wotlk were complete disasters however and the game kept losing massive numbers of subs after every single release. Cuz Bobby was there.
I only played FF 14 like 4 hours. But I have a very, very long history with video games and especially MMOs.
1 hour into the game, the first thing that appeared in my mind was “an actual game designer designed this game”. Regardless of being good or bad. I have a few criticisms on the game already. But it has been carefully DESIGNED by someone who knows the job.
You know what I said when I saw WoW expansions after WotLK? “An absolute idiot designed this”. Because it was so. They sacked all honest game designers and left the designing to some third class slaves that would accept whatever the finance department told them to do.
So the difference is like day and night.
But vanilla wow/ TBC and wotlk were not like that. They were also designed by actual, professional, educated game designers. That’s why they felt good. That’s why they kept growing in sub numbers. And that’s why we wanted nochanges in classic. Because despite all their flaws, earlier versions of WoW had real game designers.
You didn’t answer the question, Why would it suddenly collapse within a year?
Consider that by the time FFXIV launched WoW had been out for nearly 10 years and had been pretty much uncontested in the MMO Market. People are naturally going to keep playing games they have already sunk time into, That’s not something unique to World of Warcraft.
Retail + Classic does not beat FFXIV based on metrics from this month, By all means show me your source.
ok, sure. but,umm, here’s a thing…it’s been 8 years since the game’s release already (and 11 if we count 1.0). but yea, you can wait for another year as if it’s going to drastically change something in the bigger picture.
So creating a super bad game, for example WoD wich peaked at 10m pn launch subscribers is worse then Having a so called perfekt game that has finally reached 2m players after 8 years of trying? And those numbers probobly involve the free to play playerbase. Retail will Bloom up again now when new patch arrives and tbc is thriving atm aswell.
If WoW had 10 million subscribers when WoD Launched with it’s sub count having been on a downward trend for 7 years and the sub count now having fallen below 1.5 million why would FFXIV suddenly collapse within a year with it’s population trending upwards with each patch/expansion?
Because MMOs take commitment and people invest in their characters, they have friends and guilds. Most people came back to WoD as it had a good cinematic+they wanted to see what it is look like.
Like myself and a hundred people I know.
And after 1 month, seeing that how terrible it is (garrisons lol what a meme) almost half the subs were already cancelled.
You need to look at trends if you want to analyze if an expansion pack is good or not, not raw numbers. If a game that previously had 50m subs(lets say) drops to 30m after some expansion packs, its not a success. It means the game is bleeding.
FF 14 is not bleeding. It kept increasing in numbers and it still is. Also, a lot of players are benefitting from the free trial that they are offering, which doesn’t show in sub numbers, but the game has way more active players. They are potential future subs. So many new players are around in every zone its unreal. I guess the sub numbers will be doubled in a few months if this trend goes on. (just a random SS in a town and all the people with green seeds next to their names are new trial accounts) https://ibb.co/CJpRtN9
Idk if FF14 is the wow killer or not. But one thing is clear: people are looking for a new proper game that doesn’t treat them like cash cows. Only whales and convenience monkeys are going to stay in wow if some good MMOs can come up and take the vast majority of this massive playerbase searching for a good game.
it’s not about “Which game is better” every player have different needs! if some find what they seek in ffxiv? and others find it in wow (classic or retail)! that’s what it’s all about.
However it’s not that players are not allowed to play each game, this is not a loyalty matter, it’s just games where you seek random fun in your free time.
i for 1 Play Classic wow, shadowlands - FF-XIV! & i always said this, “no point in making many alts in just 1game, where you can have 1~2 char in different games”