And when you compare activity those same people who actually DO them from years ago and compare them to now and the numbers are all lower, that gives credibility.
You have to compare like to like. I get you want to discredit this before even checking out the videos, but have an open mind.
Just want to say, I agree with you. I started playing XIV a little over a month ago, completed the MSQ and started leveling up alt jobs. It’s such a breath of fresh air after the vicious cycle I found myself in playing WoW.
Over the past year in WoW I’ve leveled so many alts and repeated so many covenant questlines that it’s become nauseating. I kept thinking maybe I’d find a class/spec that really spoke to me, but I think I realized the game just wasn’t fun anymore. The dailies and weeklies are tedious, and compared to the catch-up mechanics for alts in XIV, it’s almost a slap in the face re-doing Chorthia or another covenant assault.
There’s just a better reward structure vs time spent in game in XIV. I’ve run Mists over 2 dozen times this season looking for an Unbound Changeling with nothing to show for it, oftentimes taking the currency from the vault (even with 3x raid options and a minimum of 2x m+ options). It’s insulting and I think it broke me. The currency/vendor system works wonderfully in XIV and at least lets me feel like I’m making progress on my character still. Character power isn’t also time gated, and a lot of endgame PvE content is mostly done for cosmetics, not player power.
Tell that to the dwindling playercounts. Also really, kind of sad your main draw that someone would return to WoW is that they “have too much time invested.” How about people coming back because the game doesn’t suck? Eh who am I kidding, that’ll never happen.
Most people don’t have 20k+ achievement points. It is like spending 10 years at a job, getting all that prestige, position, tenure, experience, etc., then moving onto a new job. At first, it is easy because the benefits are better, but when you have to rebuild from scratch, you can’t help but look back and wonder if you would like the old one better.
Sounds like it’s hard to get a house in there - fantasy mirroring reality. I didn’t realize a player would not be able to get a house. (I’ve not played that game, I know little about it).
Dunno, I have never tried, but for ffxiv it is making a shortcut to the launcher and changing the launcher properties for the shortcut. Certainly could be possible for any game I would think.
I LOVE FF14. it’s amazing for casuals and can be good for hardcore types too. Dungeons are fun, leveling a new job is fun, people are mostly friendly, housing, glamour, gold saucer, trials/raids, amazing crafting, cool classes. The combat is slow at first but it gets better at later levels. I even started tanking which I never thought I’d do. I miss WoW sometimes and even subbed for a month to do a couple things because both games have strengths and weaknesses but FF>WoW for sure.
I said i’m doubting. If you’re going to tell me to have an open mind, then please don’t ignore the very words i’ve said here.
I didn’t say it’s not or was trying to discredit them.
Here’s the thing, it could be an accurate player count who are participating those activities by itself, and these are popular activities to do in WoW. So popular that Blizzard placed a higher importance on them as the expansions roll on by. But as a representation for subs, implying the only things, and i’m very literal, the only things you can do in WoW is raid, pvp and dungeon, is kind of misleading here on what the subs are. This is disregarding people who just does RP, world content, Pet battles, achievement hunting, auction house living, and a myriad of other things that aren’t PvP, Dungeons and Raiding. They might not be popular as those 3, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be counted.
That would be like me trying to get a count of all Skyrim players by numbering up the ones who modded their game, kind of missing a lot of other factors here.
Understandable.
/sips his coffee.
So two Belluar videos and an Asmongold reacting to one of Belluar’s video. Alright, let’s take a look at the damage here.
I’ve discussed already how taking from the 3 most popular modes aren’t an accurate repersentation of numbers for subs here, and also how MAU’s aren’t accurate either, because again, it takes into account of MTX and other things.
Wowranks.iocould potentially be accurate, but this again, is just focusing on popular things here. This is not including people who didn’t even pick, which… say what you will and it is pretty rare, but it still exists. Especially when you consider there’s people who are yet to be max level (mostly new players or old players not choosing threads of fate). This is not even going to begin to getting into the fact that it assumes if you own shadowlands at all.
That’s sort of a problem i had with Bellular’s video as i’m trucking along, it’s just using the numbers that is only representative for the people doing that particular activity and has the capacity to be traced for a representation for the total amount of players that play the game. A game that isn’t just shadowlands, nor it isn’t just raiding/dungeons/pvp. Not to mention the video doesn’t includes the damage from lawsuits and not to mention it’s a month old, so these numbers he shown, even if they are true, could be outdated potentially.
Second video is him getting data from Superdata, and it’s back in March. Unforuntely, even though i’ve typed the link exactly into google from his video (because he seems to have a habit of not sourcing himself for credibility sakes and wants us to trust his word alone), the link seemed to be gone or down. But on the video here, the superdata summary (which they should for a good 6 to 8 minutes thoughout) doesn’t seem to establish on what are the normal levels. This is the same problem i had with Superdata awhile back, whether it be from Wow Classic or Shadowlands. It just throws percentages without an actual number to work on. And then there’s the quote of “these figures do not include china”, so this isn’t a complete total amount of players to begin with. “User numbers declined by 41%”… okay, 41% of what? what’s the number were working with here?.. How is this reliable in any shape or form if it doesn’t give us the number it’s working with here?
As for Asmongold, i don’t have much to say about it since it just a reaction video. Over a video i’ve already went though.
I understand why you think it’s foolish for me to want Blizzard’s numbers here, because of WoD’s quality at the time, showing subs would be a bad move for them for not only the customers, but the investors as well. And that’s fine, i will gladly accept that.
But the thing is, this is 2021, were far past the point of 2015, and all we have is just pure speculation and rough guesses. That would be just fine, but it’s being used as factual evidence here for all the subs of this game, is extremely questionable at the most charitable. You can’t just present PvP/Raiding/Dungeon numbers as the total amount of players playing WoW and have it be accurate or factual, simply put. And i was kind of hoping you understand that, considering i’m assuming you watched these videos, because you should know these aren’t the only things to do in WoW.
He already corrected himself in a recent video: a -50% decline in endgame activity: not player count. His info is just as bad of a source as the mmo population websites (which literally only uses the mmos reddit section to estimate player numbers).
They still don’t believe it, 9.1.5 is just a bunch of things to stop the bleeding but they think opened covenants is going to bring the players back. I think it’s most evident by the fact none of the changes they are making are in line with anything that would hint to a shift in design philosophy. It all hints to “look, we get you’re mad so we loosened the leash a little bit, yeah the leash wasn’t pleasant but it achieved what we wanted from it.”
It’s like watching someone sit in the center of their house burning down around them thinking they’ll wake up any moment now and it’ll all have been a dream.
He never quit in the first place though.
And did say he would come back to check WoW out if something new happened.
This really should not come as a surprise.
Now question is whether he finds something to do in WoW or not.
I said i’m doubting. If you’re going to tell me to have an open mind, then please don’t ignore the very words i’ve said here. 
