LoL.
You are whining like crazy about having to grind a bit to keep up with active players / deal with a little of weekly gating and then turn around defending SE holding people hostage with a house that the likelihood of getting beck is near 0?
The demo timer is 45 days, so I can't even lapse two months, let alone a whole patch cycle. Not that I'd want to, anyway but we're discussing systems here, not personal preference.
Sorry but this is pathetic.
MMOs are designed around encouraging activity. If you cannot or do not want to be concurrently active, then the genre is not the right one for you.
Otherwise: get into a mom & pop guild that accepts these activity schedules and sticks to lower end content. Don't expect to be able to run mythic raids and dominate the parses on day 5 after a 6 month hiatus. Sheesh.
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Ah yes, comparing ancient content vs. current content que times to deduce the # of active players certainly makes a lot of sense...
No doubt WoW is still "bigger" than FF, FF is much more niche in it's design and does not appeal so much to the "raid or nothing" crowd due to a lack of bosses.
Ultimately, as long as the population is healthy in terms of finding groups or guilds, I don't give a rats rear end which game has more players.