Im guessing XIVCensus is tracking the Achievements for the final quest of 5.5 MSQ, no?
Nah, 5.0.
“Any reference to “Active” characters, refers to characters that have claimed the following item:
The minion for completing the Shadowbringers Main Scenario Quest from the Patch 5.0 story”
Thats lower than what I expected if that is the case.
FFXIV surpassing WoW is literally that “Malcolm in the Middle” meme with Dewey going “The future is now, old man!” Except they’re both old men…
Yet… much of the playerbase believes the data is accurate, and while conflated it does, I think at least, indicate that many players who were Hardcore blizzard fans are extremely exhausted with the company and are so desperate for a change their flipping to play the fun game instead of the boring and aggravating one they spent a decade plus on.
I flipped, and I’m having a great time in Eorzea.
I think the devs care more.
It’s not perfect, but I’m having a LOT more fun with my FF14 friends than my empty friends list here.
9.1 is, on the surface, more maw and torghast. It doesn’t matter if that’s accurate or not.
That’s what the perception of many is, and that’s not a great draw for people to come back.
An interesting way to look at this is to flip it on it’s head: Does FF14 view WoW as a threat to their playerbase? And I think… no, not really. Square-Enix is just doing their thing, ramping up their aggression in recruitment, giving players what they want, and providing a great story. WoW doesn’t really do any of those things FF is focusing on here.
So… I’ll see you in Eorzea, or not. /shrug.
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Only WoW GD does – because it sh!ts on WoW, the current pasttime.
Literally FF14 reddit and their GD were skeptical of that data. FF14 reddit which has been known to be “wow bad, ff14 good” was more inquisitive of the numbers because they didnt make sense to any other estimations they had previously
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Doubt it, its all about Ion’s cornered view of his player experience and its making us suffer.
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are you questioning the wow bad narrative? that’ll get ya some downvotes bruh.
It depends on the team and what they would consider to be the causes of the alleged failure.
For all we know they could double down
True. I actually tried FF for like a week or two in my offtime and I just couldn’t get over the anime aesthetics and the cat people, it’s just not my thing.
Oh ok.
Everything’s good, WoW players are super stoked for more torghast and maw, and your biases are confirmed. 
No problems and it sounds like WoW players must be happier than ever!
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Pretty impressive that an offline game has 13k users.
Here is the link for others interested.
https://mmo-population.com/r/wildstar/
“WildStar is estimated to have 13,140 players per day this month”
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WoW has its issues – but doesnt mean FF14 has 2.5 million plays post-peak ShB. Literally makes zero sense for a game entering into a 6 month drought to be massively growing in numbers.
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It’s funny because from raider.io data 7.5 million unique characters completed a shadowlands mythic+ dungeon in 9.0.
Many are alts for sure, but still.
And tons of players don’t even do mythic+ at all.
No competition makes a company stagnate. I hope FF14 surpasses WoW in order to light a fire under the devs’ butts.
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So… this?
/shrug
Again, I dont think most of the playerbase believes the that FF14 is growing to 2.5 million post-peak ShB or entering into a 6 month content drought.
Btw if you download final fantasy, I’d recommend the demo which lets you play the game practically for free up to level 60
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What they need to do is what I believe was done with Final Fantasy - take the servers offline for a year, put in a new game boss with a creative team of developers (including people who play the game) and completely revamp it. Start from scratch and create an entirely new WoW.
I’d like to see the end of Shadowlands being the birth of Azeroth the Titan, which effectively destroys the planet Azeroth. So the game has to move to an entirely new world, with new graphics, new unexplored continents, entirely new systems. Keep our characters but they won’t be the same because the systems will all be changed.
The Classic and TBC servers could stay live and they could continue to offer classic versions of the old game for people who want to relive those expansions, or new players who want to see how the old game worked.
If they cleaned the blackboard and started again with a game suitable to today’s players but full of the fun that was the best of WoW, that would be a game to come back to.
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Sadly I agree.
I don’t think their reticence to make content for today’s players stems only from Ion though. I think more need to go.
( I actually like ion but I don’t feel like the content is great for my needs and the game Def needs a true reboot).