Feels like WoW has more players again

[Relapses]

What do they actually count anyways, what does ATI even mean exactly? Just content activity? Like RP Players do 0 activity so that means they dont get counted at all or ?

You can use Blizzard's APIs to scrape achievements or dungeon completion numbers. There are ways to trend data using information separate from Blizzard's API as well but any way you slice it the numbers that you get will be incomplete.

[Gimlix]

You can use Blizzard's APIs to scrape achievements or dungeon completion numbers. There are ways to trend data using information separate from Blizzard's API as well but any way you slice it the numbers that you get will be incomplete.

But for someone like me, i rarely do dungeons that does not mean less people are playing even though i used to do dungeons before? Same for achievements i used to get 4 achies a day for 3 months straight but now i get like 1-3 a week.

Seems quite unreliable indeed to trust on, but i guess it is the same way how FF14 gets tracked ?

[Relapses]

But for someone like me, i rarely do dungeons that does not mean less people are playing even though i used to do dungeons before? Same for achievements i used to get 4 achies a day for 3 months straight but now i get like 1-3 a week.

Seems quite unreliable indeed to trust on, but i guess it is the same way how FF14 gets tracked ?

Correct. You're now seeing why I always call these numbers imaginary. People are comparing one set of imaginary numbers to another set of imaginary numbers and drawing conclusions that support a viewpoint they had before they even quoted the imaginary numbers.

[Gimlix]

Correct. You're now seeing why I always call these numbers imaginary. People are comparing one set of imaginary numbers to another set of imaginary numbers and drawing conclusions that support conclusions they made before they even quoted the imaginary numbers.

But isn't this what is happening to WoW, the same happening to FF14, like you can talk WoW good, but that does also mean FF14 is on same boat but they have more activity? Or does the "ATI" of FF14 work completely different? Same with China region on WoW i guess its the same thing as on FF14?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

But isn't this what is happening to WoW, the same happening to FF14, like you can talk WoW good, but that does also mean FF14 is on same boat but they have more activity? Or does the "ATI" of FF14 work completely different? Same with China region on WoW i guess its the same thing as on FF14?

It depends on rather FF's API works the same with missing characters and a lack of china ect.

people seem to track it but no clue if the API works the same or how accurate it is.https://ffxivcensus.com/

[trandwidther]

No, FFXIV has more media relevance—that much seems pretty clear. People are talking about it more actively now. However, the buzz has sufficiently reduced and waned. Simultaneously, it seems like some players went to New World instead, which seems to be waning rapidly, making it not impossible that Blizzard could start waxing again.

The social media rankings on FF14 have also tanked massively of late.

The truth is it wasn't FF14 that was gaining attention. It was streamers bitching about wow and how much better their new girlfriend is. If you remove the wow component the views aren't that great frankly.

[deenman]

Looked at the FF14 stats, it had 7.4M at 1 point in 2021. No fucking way indeed.
But i still don't get it where people manage to pull all numbers from how WoW has no activity since Blizzard is the only one that knows. Where do they pull all these info from.

FF had 3 mil active players before the wow stuff,its not crazy to imagine another 3-4 from the exodus

[Echo of Soul]

But for someone like me, i rarely do dungeons that does not mean less people are playing even though i used to do dungeons before? Same for achievements i used to get 4 achies a day for 3 months straight but now i get like 1-3 a week.

Seems quite unreliable indeed to trust on, but i guess it is the same way how FF14 gets tracked ?

No, FF14 is completely untrackable so any information you read is guess work at best. The WoW api however is very open, if you play the game you'll leave some foot print that can be used to determine if you've played recently or not. However this is on a character level and not on an account level which means that regardless of how sophisticated your parsing of the armory is you'll always get numbers that are higher than the sub count. You can make educated guesses but it's impossible to know how many alts people play on regularly.

[czarek]

Dunno havent played for a months. Last i played server was pretty empty. Only few ppl around Oribos and pretty much none in Orgri.

[Adamas102]

I do wonder how FF14 is known to have beaten WoW in activity then? Like Blizzard hasn't said anything yet?

Why would Blizzard say anything about how another game may or may not be doing?

[ArenaDk]

FF had 3 mil active players before the wow stuff,its not crazy to imagine another 3-4 from the exodus

Thats actually pretty crazy.

If we are realistic a low low low percent of players cares / knows about streamers. So if they were able to motivate 4 million people to jump game. WoW woukd have to have insane player numbers wider over 30-40 millin which is nonsense

[Lorgar Aurelian]

FF had 3 mil active players before the wow stuff,its not crazy to imagine another 3-4 from the exodus

Where did you get the 3mil from number from?

[Hyrja]

When you play on a "Full" server then yea, the game feels very much alive.

[Gimlix]

FF had 3 mil active players before the wow stuff,its not crazy to imagine another 3-4 from the exodus

Yeah that is not true at all. FF14 actual userbase according to stats was around 500k before it got popular. Even steamgraphs show that it wasn't that big of a game for years at all. Just recently. Also there has never been a confirm of EXODUS. Quartercalls kinda confirmed it.
Most people had their sub running all through the hate of WoW if we look at the QC.

[trandwidther]

When you play on a "Full" server then yea, the game feels very much alive.

I play on a realm that's been on the point of death for as long as I can remember...it seems weirdly vibrant all of a sudden.

[Selah]

I'm seeing a lot of conversations about numbers. We really don't know any sub numbers, and we'll likely never know. The best we can do is track outside numbers and watch for trends based on those numbers. We can also look to the greater context of the community too and see trends that way. But, as for solid numbers to precisely gauge the health of WoW? Not so much.

[Historical Tenacity]

FF had 3 mil active players before the wow stuff,its not crazy to imagine another 3-4 from the exodus

Yeah that is not true at all. FF14 actual userbase according to stats was around 500k before it got popular. Even steamgraphs show that it wasn't that big of a game for years at all. Just recently. Also there has never been a confirm of EXODUS. Quartercalls kinda confirmed it.
Most people had their sub running all through the hate of WoW if we look at the QC.

No official numbers have ever been given, and people keep on trying to make sense of the nonsensible.

The only information we have is thus:

When 2.0 first launched, they mentioned that they need at least 400-500k subscribers to even stay afloat and provide patches. I won't put too much stock on guesses on the number or why it is. Perhaps that was a number to justify resources being put into it when the product already failed and the industry was used to dropping something to move onto the next that could make more.

All we know is that they met those numbers and then some -- in fact, Yoshi-P said he was really happy with the numbers they got, and they were over estimates. At the time, it was guessed at around 600-700k only on the hearsay that he was happy and it was larger than their highest estimate.

In Heavensward their budget was tripled on the basis of continued growth and future profits. They also added more servers and additional data centers around this time.

Stormblood their budget was doubled from where Heavensward was due to continued growth. In fact, server issues plagued the first couple of weeks leading into what is known as "Raubahn Savage" since instances couldn't be made to continue with the story and queues were piling up.

Due to this, they bought more servers for the back end (not additional servers, but ones for those that already exist) and started working on their world visit systems

This led to a near perfect launch of Shadowbringers with all their extra space. But this is where the population started to really grow due to the reception 5.0 got. The story was praised to the point where the writer got a standing ovation at gamescon in 2019 -- which, to me, was surprising since it is one of the first times I saw a writer get a standing ovation at any point, much less one that isn't even dedicated to the game in question. There was even a case where Yoshi-P went on stage during E3 during the Sony Event (I think) where many in the crowed errupted in yelling "Yoshi-p!".

At this point, the cities were full and Shadowbringers was getting prime time queues as it kept on growing. Which led me to playing WoW during prime time and FFXIV during the AM since I frequently switched servers, which was accruing to around 20-30 minutes of queue a day overall (1-3 minutes per switch) and I could be using that time having fun playing a game like WoW rather than waiting in queue.

Then July hit and the game, which was on patch 5.55 with the story settled and waiting for Endwalker, exploded in popularity. For years it already had a massive amount of memes and such, but even these increased.

It got so much traction that the team instantly tried to buy more servers. Their original plan, according to Yoshi-P, was to see how Endwalker did before committing to such. Though they grew so much that they mentioned being given the green light to "spare no expense" when it comes to the future of FFXIV. He said during the media tour that FFXIV had become a core part of Square Enix and they basically had a blank check going forward. He mentioned earlier that he would have like to order the servers prior to such, but was working within Endwalker's budget and had already invested over $20 million into a new data center for SEA due to player growth even prior to July. So this new spare no expense stance seems like a big weight off his shoulder as a whole.

So as time goes on, we have less and less accurate information to go on. Just that they needed 400-500k subs at ARR to consider it an investment worth the resources it was given. Then their budget was tripled in Heavensward, showing that it was as Yoshi-P said and it was much higher than their highest estimates. Then increased again with Stormblood. We're unsure if it got another boost in Shadowbringers, as our past knowledge of such were from one of his thousands of interviews he gives / questions he answers in game when he logs in and people gather around him to ask such. There is also the issue of language barriers and most of these don't get translated properly or at all.

Though to be given the green light on an unlimited budget for future expansions is the only thing we have to go on at the moment.

We also know that Yoshi-P was promoted to the Board of Directors in 2018 for just how much money the game was making. Also that he was put in charge of the online division / Creative Business Unit 3 and their team was also tasked with FFXVI due to their success with Heavensward.

Therefore the only thing we can say for certain is that they would not do any of this if they only maintained their minimum goal of active subscribers starting from ARR. So the question becomes a personal one: How many subscribers would there have to be before you felt safe to give a game a spare no expense mandate? After you already increased their budget greatly to the point where they could drop 20 million on a new data center and still produce something like Endwalker? When the minimum in the past was already 400-500k just to keep the proverbial doors open for A Realm Reborn?

Edit: I mentioned this in a future post, but it bears repeating here. In July they mentioned that by the end of June, they had almost 3x (or about 200% more) the pre-orders for Endwalker than Shadowbringers. This was before the streaming and popularity craze of July and five months before the game was set to release. Who knows what the final figures were the day before release.

[Niwes]

game still feels empty AF to me (Europe). especially at nights, when i look into LFG tool (i play at nights since LFG tool exists, on a daily base, so i have experience in differing it).

the only indicator offering the oposite, is the token price. normally the market defines „when token price sinks, player number increase“. the token was stable at 300.000-310.000 for months. its actually sunk to 293.000. maybe this means the player number increased a small bit. idk…

not sure. personally it still feels empty AF to me. but wh knows… (besides Blizz)

[deenman]

No official numbers have ever been given, and people keep on trying to make sense of the nonsensible.

The only information we have is thus:

When 2.0 first launched, they mentioned that they need at least 400-500k subscribers to even stay afloat and provide patches

well,i wouldnt put to much stock in that statement,as a good whale can bring in more money than thausands of sub onlys,and FF was made to be a whaling game,its far worse than wow in that regard,and more profitable

[MeTaL GuArD]

well,i wouldnt put to much stock in that statement,as a good whale can bring in more money than thausands of sub onlys,and FF was made to be a whaling game,its far worse than wow in that regard,and more profitable

Maybe if you're talking about transmogs, because for everything else, the existence of the token alone puts WoW leagues ahead in terms of whale potential, as you can buy just about anything that matters for real money that way - carries for all kinds of content, the most expensive mounts, black market AH, etc. It's gotten to the point where half of the groups in finder was advertising boosting. At least FFXIV doesn't have that(because it's forbidden to advertise boosting for in-game gold there, and they strictly enforce this). At worst there's a bot or two in the most crowded capitals offering RMT in very vague terms.