Is FF14 dead on arrival?

[Tietoso]

my question is: is final fantasy realm reborn a flop?
i was having an argument with my guildmates (wow snobs that like to boast about how other mmos are dead and cant hold a candle to wow) and he told me FF14 was a flop with almost no userbase and in decline. now, i have no way to prove his argument wrong(tho obviously he cant back up his fanboy hating) so how can i know if FF14 is or not a flop? and what constitute an mmo being a flop? not having 10million users? 1 million users?

[Arkenaw]

No, in fact, there are too many people on my server.

[Deleted]

They had to stop selling digital copies for a while because they had so many people. Every popular area is crowded on my server (Gilgamesh) and I'm talking dozens to hundreds of people at everything but the most slow hours of the day/night.

[Valenhil]

He obviously doesn't realize how big the FF series is. This is way beyond just one more WoW clone.

[Kutartwo]

As mentioned above, there are still alot of people in the game, and with the addition of the new patch in the coming weeks, more will follow. The game is hardly dead, at any hour of the day I can find a group and play anything I want with them. Playing the game I realize that its not meant to hold 6 million+ players like wow. It's catered to a specific group of players, and I think that's what attracts the people who are playing right now, including myself. FF14 Arr will not kill wow, but it does provide an alternative for people who are tired of the identity crisis that is wow.

[Redwyrm]

I had to turn off player/pet nameplates, because in the main city marketplaces it was nearly impossible to find stuff on the screen due to all the floating text. I do wish FFXIV would implement a few of WoWs feature though. Blocking gold spammers is a pain and could be simplified. And I wish there was a better way to compare new equipment with currently equipped gear.

[-aiko-]

As of October, the game had over 1.5 million subscribers registered players and high retention according to YoshiP. I can't seem to find anything more up to date but I'd be comfortable saying that the game is in a healthy state.

Edit for clarity

[Katchii]

Your guild mate is obviously a troll or an idiot.

The game is doing fine with healthy populations on most if not all servers and over a million subscribers worldwide (1.5 million as of 10/25/13.... https://www.google.com/#q=final+fantasy+14+users google is hard, derp.)

Tell him to read the news before spouting off BS.

[mizeri]

I tried to buy it online but the website was really confusing so I said screw it and started playing witcher 2 again

[Instructor Soki]

Its biggest issues are client/server responsiveness, animation-lock (can't use two instant off-GCD skills at once) and maps.
While the maps look pretty, and you can see cool landscape in the distance, you can't actually go there.

Almost all of the game's issues stem from PS3-limitations.
I played for these 3 months - and I probably won't again until a huge patch.

[Boogums]

Yeah, I stopped playing, but it wasn't really due to any particular fault with the game. The journey was fun, but I just couldn't commit to another MMO endgame. Just not compelling enough to put forth that sort of investment.

What endgame? AMIRITE.

[Grym]

Depends on what you count as a flop.

FFXI, just had its XI anniversary, sub based and is still going strong.

FFXIV, currently having 1.5mil registered user, which is good, especially bear in mind that a MMO with 500k player base can keep the game running.

SE was in some financial difficulties but FFXIV managed to take it out of the problem, so yeah I wouldn't call it a flop.

In fact I even quitted WoW now, as I prefer FF a lot more, but that is a personal taste problem as I am a FF fan, it is not as polished and smooth as WoW but I prefer the style, story, class, design and music in FF a lot more.

[nocturnus]

1.5 million registered users, not subscribers, if I'm not mistaken.

Game seems to be dying to me (Leviathan) and almost everyone I know already quit, but that's not because it's a bad game. It just has a long ways to go with endgame.

Same here. Nothing going on, on one of the most crowded EU servers. The new patch wouldn't bring anything for us either, since we're done farming coil up to turn 4 and no new turns will be released. Everyone (in our raid team) quit, and I **** my account for a pretty penny.

It was okay for a while. But the shitty engine and crappy netcode really got to us.

[Deleted]

He obviously doesn't realize how big the FF series is. This is way beyond just one more WoW clone.

Sadly, the FF series isn't what it used to be. Not saying that FF14 is dead though.

[Sorrior]

My server Adamantoise isn't dead..Smaller then it was yes but certainly not dead.

[Armourboy]

I can say early morning isn't as active as what it was, but I can't tell if thats because of the holidays or player retention. We've had several people quit, but almost all of them are what I label as " rushers". They just had to get everything done right this minute, couldn't wait, and then when they got done complained they had nothing left to do ( and most of them never ran more than an instance or two at max).

Its a solid game, but I think people keep expecting every MMO to keep people occupied for 50 hours a week for months on end. It just isn't going to happen anymore because people are unwilling to deal with slow leveling, huge grinds, or other massive time killers. Players asked companies to take the tedious time consuming stuff out, thus removing the very things that kept them playing for months on end

I also think far too many people are burnt out on MMO's and just can't move on because of the fear of missing out on the next big thing.

[Grym]

A lot of people I know were rushing it too much.

I rushed a little myself I guess. Already had BLM at 1.0 so started with a Lv50, whenever I take a new job to 50 I grind the hell out of AK/WP to have new class in full DL/crafted gear combo within a week, so now have very little reason to run dungeons except for Myth cap.

Have T4 Coil to farm, but still have T5 to go. This patch won't give us anything new on our main, but surely CT would be nice to gear up alt classes.

[Sorrior]

A lot of people I know were rushing it too much.

I rushed a little myself I guess. Already had BLM at 1.0 so started with a Lv50, whenever I take a new job to 50 I grind the hell out of AK/WP to have new class in full DL/crafted gear combo within a week, so now have very little reason to run dungeons except for Myth cap.

Have T4 Coil to farm, but still have T5 to go. This patch won't give us anything new on our main, but surely CT would be nice to gear up alt classes.

And just see/experience.

Don't forget new myth cap methods FC house aestetician...

and then pvp and a new dungeon and hard modes with new paths/bosses.

[Grym]

I am interested in farming interesting stuff for the FC house, we currently saving up 10mil hoping it is enough to buy the largest house available on patch day, if over 10mil then everyone will dig into their wallet. There will be a lot of items here and there from the new dungeon for housing I heard, so there will be some farming for those (and if tradable, possibly a good income for the first few weeks).

Myth Cap won't be an issue, T1-4 already give you 150, new cap is 450 so 10 WP speed run will do it.
Not a PvP fan, especially tried FFXI and WoW PvP, made me wonder how FFXIV PvP would be. (FFXI = invincible RDM, WoW = FotM)
Hard mode dungeons are aimed at ilvl 55, rewarding ilvl 60 gear, other than for housing vanity items, not worth running.
Going to see what else does Extreme mode Primals offer. It has a quest that gives a ilvl 90 weapon but I believe it is a one off, so other than housing items I wonder if it drops anything else. It probably should as otherwise no one would run it again after it is done and thus screw the late comers as it will be impossible to find a good group then.

But those will be nice for people that as leveling for the first time or new class, or not yet step into Coil.
For the people already farming Coil there isn't much until patch 2.2 though.

[Lyese]

Killing all 3 Extreme Mode Primals will also yield 1 "high level" accessory per week.