Data don’t lie. Keep denying, I know it’s hard to accept it. Copium.
Majority of people don’t play the game on Steam and to be honest buying it on there is probably the biggest mistake I’ve made with the game. I didn’t buy any of the expansions on release except Endwalker but I can tell you right now that the expansions almost never go on sale on Steam ever. Steam for whatever reason is separate than having a PC license and you can’t migrate it over either.
If Blizzard put WoW on steam and it only showed 5k people would you believe that there’s literally only 5k people playing the game too?
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FFXIV has over 25 million players, announced by Square themselves. WoW’s numbers are so low they won’t even divulge that info. Lol
25 Million players is not subscribed players it’s just the total number of accounts that have been made.
Of course not, but then again, it’s a one day sample and it had a peak of 95k CONCURRENT players, I’d say that’s pretty big number to consider. The “most people don’t play on Steam” => where did you get that info? I think there’s a lot of assumptions here but the Steam data is real and it shows that the interest, at least on Steam which you can consider as a pretty sizable sample and avenue for game popularity, to be below New World and MIR4 at the moment.
You can straight up look at the player count history on FFXIV on Steam. If you honestly think what is deemed as the second most subscribed mmo currently is (and has been for years before the WoW exodus occurred) was pulling that little numbers then I don’t really know what to tell you.
Second, you keep comparing it to other games, one of them New World which is literally only available through Steam itself so yes, of course the player count is going to be higher.
Mir4 is literally a NFT scam game that’s baiting people into thinking they’re going to actually make IRL money off of that trash.
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Estimate from luckybancho is 1.62mil as at Nov 2021.
So your point is that there is a sizable amount of players on steam. Which you were told is an insignificant portion of ff14s actual player base and you believe this is some kind of gottem moment?
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You do know that those numbers for CONCURRENT Players is pretty high right? Also, New World can be bought and played through the Amazon Store too. Yes, MIR4 is NFT Scam but it’s free to play and because of that interest is higher. Don’t get me wrong, for a subscription based game, FFXIV is doing amazing and I’m really happy for them, but it’s just not just as amazing as people were saying here before.
You are telling me 95k concurrent player is insignificant? Steam is not a small platform, it’s THE most popular PC game distributor. You really think most FF players discovered the game through pure “Hey I’m going to randomly go to mogstation.com to buy the game and download the launcher there”. Very hard to believe. I’m sorry but this is absurd. BTW, I’m playing FF and Im loving it. Just stop trying to be so defensive and saying non-sense.
Honestly never saw the hype for ff. Everytime someone mentions it theres always the same recurring phrase. “Critically acclaimed mmo. Award winning heavens whatever expansion.” Sounds like a greasy car salesman trying to sell you something lol
I think you raise some solid points besides this quote, but this reasoning is genuinely flawed. It amounts to “I don’t believe it, so it can’t be true.” I personally prefer using the mogstation over Steam because Steam support with sub-based games tend to be problematic.
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Steam sends you to them to create an account and you quickly realize there is no benefit to using steam to open their launcher.
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Yeah, anedoctally you personally prefer that while I personally prefer the opposite because Steam is pretty good with refunds. I’m just saying you can’t say Steam is an insignificant amount and say most people that play FF don’t use Steam. First, while that may be true, you don’t have that data so you can’t make that kind of statement either and second, Steam is not a small indie store, it’s the most popular store and there’s a very good reason why FF is there, because Steam is very good at making your game known to most people who play PC games.
What people don’t get with my point here: FFXIV is a subscription based MMO, with dated graphics to today’s standards, slow combat compared to most other games, slow main quest progression, with JRPG elements. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I personally like it, but it’s not as popular as people may think it is. MMO is already a niche. WoW is already a niche game. FF is doing pretty well on Steam given all these constraints but not as well as people thought.
It’s good to know I’m not the only one doing this fantastic feat… though I have to admit I’ve done it more than once 
To me I’d feel safer using Steam numbers to look at growth/decline patterns rather than to use their absolute numbers because there’s just no way to say with confidence that the numbers are reliable. There’s already someone who did quite a lot of research into FF14 sub numbers: ‘luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/56220904.html#more’ and those numbers seem quite reasonable to me given their strict measurement criteria, so with that alone a lot of fluff can be filtered out.
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Yeah, and that is also why many people dislike watching video games as well.
I used to fight Karate, and when I was in highschool I used to play basketball.
I dread watching either.
And I mostly dont like watching sports events for the sake of it. Maybe in movies about them, or as part of a documentary. But I would rather do something else.
Besides, there is a huge difference, back to the point, between watching someone playing WoW, someone playing Outriders, and someone playing Final Fantasy.
I dont like watching someone else playing any games, but I dread more watching someone playing FF than I would someone playing WoW.
WoW is not a story driven, or an interesting personal experience to watch. Anyone playing wow can play the same things, see the same things with the same eyes.
FF is a story driven MMORPG, and the journey through it get you invested, immersed, and that makes a difference. If you really like what FF has that wow does not, the interesting story and the immersive nature, it cant be mimicked by watching someone else do it.
It is not like “other things” which is there a “thing” in watching someone else doing and getting pleasure from it (to some). In that sense, we can make that exact parallel.
WoW is a casual fling, it is just for the sake of doing. FF is a relationship, you cant take the most rewarding part of it if you are not IN IT.
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My favorite part is Endwalker has had more launch troubles than Shadowlands did, but people will still say Endwalker did it better just because they want to hate on WoW.
Has anyone said this though? Because the FF14 forums are full of anger rn. There’s even a thread titled “Irresponsible Management,” and another thread complaining about something that reminds me of the GD in Dec 2020:
“This is absolutely inexcusable from a company with the resources and experience like SE. It is unimaginable to me that SE did not prepare in any manor for this after this level of PR, especially the preorder campaign.”
And the first reply was “Can I have your stuff?” it’s literally the GD 
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