ffxiv FFXIV - Large Player Drop after Dawntrail!

[Jaym0 70]

Final Fantasy XIV is experiencing a large player drop since 7.0 and 7.1, soon hitting under 1 million active players!

Dawntrail has received mixed reviews, and the game has not been doing so good since the release of patch 7.0. Despite new content such as the World of Darkness Chaotic Raid or the latest Alliance Raid, which both received good feedback, it seems that the majority of players have nothing to do in the game right now.

The latest data report published on December 29, 2024, by Lucky Bancho, provides an analysis of player activity in Final Fantasy XIV following the release of Patch 7.1. The report indicates a decline in active characters:

• The number of active players decreased by 120,000, going from 1.15 million to approximately 1.03 million
• New character creation has slowed, with about 47,000 new characters, down from 54,000 in the previous period
• The number of players still active since the previous update is around 830,000, a decrease of 170,000
• The number of returning players who were previously inactive but have now become active is approximately 120,000, an increase of 20,000

The number of active players right now is close to falling below 1 Million. This means it will soon be lower than before Shadowbringer's peak number of players.

The report suggests that the overall decline in active characters may be attributed to various factors, including player engagement with new content, community dynamics, and broader gaming trends. It emphasizes the importance of entertaining story and content to attract and retain players.

The main issues being:

• Dawntrail's story did not attract the majority of players. Many felt bored and stopped playing right after they were done with MSQ
• The lack of content. While Savage, Chaotic, and Ultimate came out after 7.1, it is not content you will eternally grind once you completed it a couple of times
• Party Finder. With the possibility to jump servers, and being forced to use party finder for raiding, a lot of players end up in empty servers with no possibility to jump to "raiding servers" because they end up already full. Players end up giving up and stop playing until the next patch releases
• Lack of casual content: nothing has been released that will allow you to grind casually every day for rewards, mounts, glam, or anything else. Even events only take a few minutes to complete, there is nothing that keeps players entertained right now

A lot of other reasons can be found for the massive drop in players right now. While it is always expected in MMO games, it is still concerning considered previews expansions never saw such a decrease in active players in FFXIV. We can only hope that Square Enix will take it into account to change things for the future!

For a the complete analysis, you can refer to the original report by Lucky Bancho.