I suspect SL's hiatus will have the lowest subs in history and it will trigger events

[cityguy193]

it's numbers have not been trending upward, at least not people actually consuming content

SE had to shut down sales of the new expansion until recently because their servers could not take the next influx of players.

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Or you might as well use Google Trend data to try to prove WoW subs.

Im wondering if the best way to measure player engagement is actually tracking youtube views on popular content creators. Seems like it would be a big enough sample size instead of using random steam data.

[jeezusisacasual]

They are perhaps the lowest in history but also the gaming landscape has changed dramatically since WoW was king of the MMO hill to begin with. It is very hard for any game to keep concurrent populations into content lulls for the most part, the reasons for playing a MMO in a non seasonal manner are dwindling and i tend to think that if they created an expansion that wanted you to keep your sub going for player power without gear resets the population would tank harder and harder.

Perhaps WoW should take a look at FF14 and start moving in that sort of direction instead of the more hardcore themed MMO. So perhaps making add-ons not needed or wanted outside of cosmetic things would help lower the skill ceiling or not design around them either, would that make WoW easier in the raiding sense? Sure and i would say top end mythic raiding is harder now then at almost any other time which i refuse to mythic raid since it takes more time then a mythic dungeon with a progression path that takes longer then 6 weeks ( for pugging KSM not a dedicated team ) and the people that want to raid like that take the min/max attitude to much almost like they are apart of a sports team so no for me, life should be easier not harder.

I wear my Hand of Adal title but never want to play or raid like that again.

[Saintlel]

SE had to shut down sales of the new expansion until recently because their servers could not take the next influx of players.

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Im wondering if the best way to measure player engagement is actually tracking youtube views on popular content creators. Seems like it would be a big enough sample size instead of using random steam data.

and yet less people have cleared the MSQ than they did prior to the expansion, can you explain that?

and also they halted the sales because their servers weren't meant for more than like 3k people at a time

[Soon-TM]

I think you got this game confused with lost ark

LA having clear P2W elements doesn't preclude WoW from having them as well.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Very few players play FFXIV through steam and this does not account for any of the playstation players. You may as well quote wow players who exclusively play on mac. The players here are low enough that while this shows the trend with normal spike in players with an expac release, a lot of it can be attributed to noise.

Well ya that’s why I said as long as the rest follow the trends.

I’m not saying this is the full fanbase or any thing like that just that it’s a fairly large sample size and Is assuredly large enough that you could use to to chart out over all trends if you want to talk stats.

[Saintlel]

Well ya that’s why I said as long as the rest follow the trends.

I’m not saying this is the full fanbase or any thing like that just that it’s a fairly large sample size and Is assuredly large enough that you could use to to chart out over all trends if you want to talk stats.

ffxiv's player retention is shit, so it's likely correct

[MoanaLisa]

Looks like overwatch 2 is their number 1 game by far, 1.3M concurrent views yesterday. Wow never hit that at any point of its lifetime. It was only matched by lost ark on its release week.

These takes are usually worthless because interest increases and decreases rapidly and today's #1 is next month's "Didn't make the Top 100." It's just common sense and I don't know why anyone thinks this is a metric that means anything other than "today".

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SE had to shut down sales of the new expansion until recently because their servers could not take the next influx of players.

Making a huge subscription-only chunk of the game suddenly free-for-everyone will do that. Why is this fact never mentioned? The sudden influx was because it was free for the first time.

[Gurkan]

With season 4 coming up, and the generally good PRs the recent interviews have gotten I don't think Blizz has anything to worry about.
Not to mention that alphas and betas usually do generate hype.

[TidalConflux]

Okay? How is that any different from wow subs being inflated during world firsts? The original poster was equating more views on stream as a more popular game, but then dismissed FF14 having higher numbers "for some reason." Wow averages anywhere from 15k-30k viewers most other days and you are free to check the twitch stats backing this up.

And no one is arguing that Blizzard doesnt sit at 15k-30k most days -- the point I was posing was FF14 doesnt even get above 10k watchers unless its an Asmongold stream or the Ultimate race. You can verify the numbers on the for statistics. Realistically, MMOs suck to watch. Its why none of them do well outside the rare occasion.

My point stands. Blizzard invested so much into the esport scene, a move that should get as many eyeballs on their game as possible. The slow release of patches for casual content in favor of bigger more competitive scene patches isnt leading to a more popular game.

No one is arguing against this either as WoW eSports outside maybe the Arena and World First isnt eye drawing at all. I think what broke Blizzard was Riot's and Valve's large international esports events as they try to catch up.

Out of all of ATVI's holdings, only blizzard lost MAUs, which is unheard of in the last few years for video games, and they attributed it to decreasing reimbursement via WOW. If wow continues on this trajectory, it will be put on maintenance mode in favor for other games. This is double true once microsoft assumes control and would be in a better position to figure out if investing in wow is a better use of its money over call of duty or candy crush.

Lol get over yourself, TESO has even less of a playerbase than WoW and Microsoft hasnt placed it on a maintenance mode yet while releasing new DLCs for it. Doing that to WoW is the doomer pipedream: all that matters with WoW is that it makes returns for the time/money invested.

On top of that: MAUs isnt completely a WoW problem, its an overall Blizzard issue -- outside of a card game, an MMO, and an arena shooter that is basically on maintenance mode until OW2 releases; what is there to play for Blizzard games?

SC2 is on maintenance mode
HOTS is on maintenance mode
D3 is in endless hell until D4 comes out
W3R is dead
D2R can only bring in so many people to refuel nostalgia

Its less of "WoW bad" problem and more of a "if Im not invested into an MMO or cards, why am I on Bnet" problem.

[bloody251]

and also they halted the sales because their servers weren't meant for more than like 3k people at a time

This is false. Each zone instance can hold 500 people and up to patch X.1 every new expansion zone has 3 instances for a total of 18 instances. That's not including cities and older zones.

[cityguy193]

These takes are usually worthless because interest increases and decreases rapidly and today's #1 is next month's "Didn't make the Top 100." It's just common sense and I don't know why anyone thinks this is a metric that means anything other than "today".

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Making a huge subscription-only chunk of the game suddenly free-for-everyone will do that. Why is this fact never mentioned? The sudden influx was because it was free for the first time.

Ehh you are better than that to make up facts. Heavensward was free for 2 years man, since mid 2020.

It was cause of the expansion. Its equivalent to you saying level 1-20 being free for wow is why it has a big chunk of its players LMFAO.

My point was that FF engagement is increasing, and wow engagement is decreasing. 2 years ago (when the first expansion became free), FF would not even average 5k views even on big patch release days. Now its more.

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Well ya that’s why I said as long as the rest follow the trends.

I’m not saying this is the full fanbase or any thing like that just that it’s a fairly large sample size and Is assuredly large enough that you could use to to chart out over all trends if you want to talk stats.

This sample size is less than the amount of people that play demo warlock on 9.2. Steam was introduced much later, and I would wager more new players tried it on there and are more likely to quit. I cant think of a single person that uses anything other than the base client.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This sample size is less than the amount of people that play demo warlock on 9.2. Steam was introduced much later, and I would wager more new players tried it on there and are more likely to quit. I cant think of a single person that uses anything other than the base client.

That's really not how sample sizes or trends work more people playing demo is irrelevant.

and again this isn't talking about the over all fan base or any thing like that and if more new players tried it on steam that would make the numbers even more valid for the over all trend as new players trying the game and for a couple months and then quitting would be a perfect example of a rise and fall in MAU.

[cityguy193]

That's really not how sample sizes or trends work more people playing demo is irrelevant.

and again this isn't talking about the over all fan base or any thing like that and if more new players tried it on steam that would make the numbers even more valid for the over all trend as new players trying the game and for a couple months and then quitting would be a perfect example of a rise and fall in MAU.

It does not work because it does not account consider the established playbase. For example, if 90% of players use the client and 10% tried the game on steam (without even knowing if they pay for a sub or not), you are really only showing the extremes of a smaller subsection of the playbase. Imagine trying to extrapolate MAUs from people using wow's free trial, it doesnt work.

Either way, I would argue that a player that installs the base FFXIV client vs someone that downloads the game on steam is more likely than not willing to stay longer with the game, and the steam player is merely trying it out. The game is free up to level 50 anyways, thats like 100 hours of the MSQ, im sure if a player just saw it trending in the steam store and wanted to try it out and decided the game was not for them, it is reflected in the above stats.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It does not work because it does not account consider the established playbase. For example, if 90% of players use the client and 10% tried the game on steam (without even knowing if they pay for a sub or not), you are really only showing the extremes.

Its the same as you comparing people that only play the wow free trial, its a different set of players.

even if you wanted to say the established playerbase stayed the exact same for all the quarters a influx of new players for a couple quarters and then an outflux of them would still be a loss of MAU.

MAU doesn't distinguish between new and old players it's just how many are active per average per month in a quarter and if people are leaving rather they are old or new that's aloss in MAU.

[DeltrusDisc]

https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/08/w...c-game-launch/

it was literaly all over the internet... not sure if your memory sucks or you cant read but its YOU who is just wrong...

Won't make that mistake again.

[cityguy193]

even if you wanted to say the established playerbase stayed the exact same for all the quarters a influx of new players for a couple quarters and then an outflux of them would still be a loss of MAU.

MAU doesn't distinguish between new and old players it's just how many are active per average per month in a quarter and if people are leaving rather they are old or new that's aloss in MAU.

MAUs dont account for free to play players, which steam cannot differentiate. My argument is that because ff is likely easier to install via steam, and steam came out only recently, newer F2P players are more likely to exist on steam, who just wanted to try the game near expansion time would be skewing the data.

Millions are accounts were made for ff14, posting a loss of 20k players from steam stats really is grasping at straws and we could do the same with other vague data such as google search stats, twitch stream viewers, new downloads of DBM, or bellular youtube views on his wow videos.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

MAUs dont account for free to play players, which steam cannot differentiate.

Millions are accounts were made for ff14, posting a loss of 20k players from steam stats really is grasping at straws and we could do the same with other vague data such as google search stats, twitch stream viewers or bellular youtube views on his wow videos.

If were talking about the same MAU metric blizzard uses then it absolutely accounts for free players it accounts for any one who opens any blizzard game for any period of time free or otherwise.

and again this isn't talking about the over all player base or any thing like that it's just a sizable sample size which you could use to chart trends for the whole and the sample size is large enough that even if FFXIV had never lost a single player and was at 20M it would still be statically valid.

[cityguy193]

If were talking about the same MAU metric blizzard uses then it absolutely accounts for free players it accounts for any one who opens any blizzard game for any period of time free or otherwise.

and again this isn't talking about the over all player base or any thing like that it's just a sizable sample size which you could use to chart trends for the whole and the sample size is large enough that even if FFXIV had never lost a single player and was at 20M it would still be statically valid.

its valid in the most literal sense, but does not account for the actual differences in steam playerbase vs actual client playerbase. You cannot ascribe a correlation if the sample is not reflective of the actual population. You are trying to find a trend in a very unpopular way of accessing the game.

Ask 100 people in Ohio if they surf. Then ask 100 people that live in Miami if they surf. You will get 2 different numbers.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

its valid in the most literal sense, but does not account for the actual differences in steam playerbase vs actual client playerbase. You cannot ascribe a correlation if the sample is not reflective of the actual population. You are trying to find a trend in a very unpopular way of accessing the game.

Ask 100 people in Ohio if they surf. Then ask 100 people that live in Miami if they surf. You will get 2 different numbers.

so I don't play the game so I wouldn't know, But in what way is playing through steam different from the client that it would cause a major different in trends between players coming in and out of the game?

[epigramx]

Im wondering if the best way to measure player engagement is actually tracking youtube views on popular content creators. Seems like it would be a big enough sample size instead of using random steam data.

It's definitely not the best way, but extrapolating based on independent search interest is probably more reliable than hearing a company with a conflict of interest (e.g. Blizzard itself or an enemy of theirs).

The actual best is probably independent research based on polling unique individuals from a good varied sample which is relatively hard (you can't just make an online poll since it can be abused).