I concur with PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor, my fellow Final Fantasy 14 enjoyer on our illustrious staff, that FF14's Occult Crescent patch has made . I actually got downright emotional, hopping into my first critical encounter and seeing swarms of strangers crowding [[link]] around a chance to give a boss a beatdown: 'Oh,' I thought, 'I'm playing an MMO again'.
But with that joy came a recognition [[link]] of , seeing desolate friend lists and linkshells lie empty. A malaise that, at least unofficially, has been backed up by numbers (thanks, ).
LuckyBancho has run an for years—given these aren't official numbers from Square Enix, they should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt, but they aren't a bad temperature check for how the playerbase is doing.
Their estimate of active accounts is roughly 950,000—and while this number can't be taken at exact face value, it is significantly lower than their prior number of 990,000, obtained using the same methodology.
All of this info was obtained towards patch 7.25, which myself and Mollie are enjoying very much—and it'll be interesting to see if it injects some life back into Square Enix's . And, to be clear, a game with almost 1 million players in it is by no means dead. But I can take a few good guesses as to why things've gotten this way.
FF14 has a content release schedule problem—not just in the gaps between patches, but in the prioritisation of content itself. Dawntrail released with no repeatable midcore content—'Midcore' being defined as content where your brain is engaged, but you don't need tight communication or high mechanical skills. In World of Warcraft, these would be world quests, reputation grinds, delves, and (debatably) the early keystones of Mythic+.
Instead [[link]] Creative Studio 3 made, once again, the backwards decision to schedule all of this stuff nearly a year after the expansion's release, prioritising Savage Raids, Extreme Trials, and Ultimates over, you know, stuff that the majority of its playerbase is going to do. Anything that isn't that tier of difficulty was either mind-numbingly straightforward (FATEs, treasure dungeons, society quests, and new story dungeons) or on a weekly lockout (Alliance Raids and Normal Raids).
There's also the elephant in the room that Square Enix basically doesn't know how to do world content. Dawntrail's zones are downright gorgeous and to be commended, and I have spent basically no time in them—I grinded out all my FATEs like a month after release, and then never left the main city again unless it's for treasure maps, gathering nodes, or society quests. You are either doing a specific dungeon or raid or trial, or you're doing nothing at all.
Then there's the game's story—FF14 has historically been kept aloft by huge player investments in its narrative and, while the latest patches have , the expansion as a whole . You can read my full thoughts in those links, but that good will is truly fractured. Only time will tell if Square Enix can turn the good ship FF14 around, and navigate back to the glory days of Shadowbringers.