The next expansion has already been announced, the current one is approaching its final stages: The MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is currently in a lull. However, the community is not entirely satisfied, and some streamers are speaking out.
What has happened recently in the Final Fantasy XIV community? Final Fantasy XIV reached a new peak in player numbers with the expansion Endwalker released at the end of 2021. The MMORPG enjoyed immense popularity.
Since then, the patches from 6.1 to the latest 6.5 have been released. These include more content like the 8- and 24-player raids, the new relic weapons, trials, dungeons, and story content. Currently, the game seems to be in a content drought and experiencing player flight, which is why some streamers have spoken out.
Zepla on the current status of Final Fantasy XIV
What does Zepla say? The US streamer Zepla is one of the biggest content creators in the English-speaking Final Fantasy XIV community. She published a video about a month ago expressing her disappointment with the patch content in Endwalker.
She points out the following issues:
- The patch story does not match the usual quality.
- “Traditional” MMORPG content is lacking. She mentions, among other things, the Eureka released with the expansion Stormblood and Shadowbringers Bozja.
- The “relic weapon grind” has been reduced to a mere currency exchange, making the acquisition of the weapon less satisfying.
- Since Final Fantasy XIV has recently been upgraded towards single-player, many players have no longer any reason to play group content even with other players.
- The Island Sanctuary has not turned out to be the cozy game section of the MMORPG as expected, but rather a management simulator.
What are Eureka and Bozja?
Eureka and Bozja are additional content in their own instances. Both pieces of content consist of several zones that have been slowly introduced over the various patches. In these, players face hundreds of enemies, special events, and even challenging 48-player raids alone or in groups. The zones have a story based on the main narrative, are part of the relic grind of their respective expansions, and can be used to level up jobs.
For Zepla, these reasons are responsible for fewer players logging in. She sees it as a vicious circle: those who used to come back repeatedly during the patches now stop playing much earlier due to the lack of content. When they return, they find an empty game and log out again.
What do other Final Fantasy XIV streamers think about this? Besides Zepla, other streamers and YouTubers have also spoken out.
Xenosys Vex, a self-proclaimed long-time Final Fantasy XIV player, addresses similar points in his own video. According to Xenosys, players are simply bored, which he attributes to the lack of current, Bozja-like content.
Most other content creators, however, only react to the videos of Zepla and Xenosys:
- Brian from Work to Gameagrees with Zepla on many points, especially regarding the main story.
- AvyCatty believes, however, that Endwalker saw the dev team experiment a lot, but not everything worked.
- Lynx Kameli speaks once again from the perspective of someone who has skipped the main story. He primarily raids and criticizes the simplified content and jobs.
What does the community say?
Under the respective videos on YouTube, there is much support from the viewers. Here are a few examples:
- doctorcis3510 on Zepla’s video: “As a player who just recently reached the endgame for the first time, I’m having a great time and feel like I have a lot to do. But, looking back, very little of what I do is after the Endwalker-Patch content.”
- vrahnkeneisenbach9148 on Zepla’s video: “My problem with the game’s development philosophy has been for some time that they introduce a lot of cool, unique ideas, but they introduce them as dead-end content that entertains for a short time and then is done forever, rather than integrating them directly into the core gameplay.”
- Longlius on Xenosys Vex’s video: “People also forget that the time between the last patch of Shadowbringers and Endwalker was unusual. During this time, a lot of people came to try out FFXIV, and so the game felt much livelier than it usually does in the drought before the expansion.”
- batwingpie on Xenosys Vex’s video: “Having played through ten years of content in one go can lead to unrealistic expectations for the current content.”
There is also discussion about the patch content on Reddit. Recently, a discussion in the subreddit “ffxivdiscussion” started about many long-term friends who have drifted apart during the patches – for some of the reasons mentioned by Zepla.
In the discussion, many see the problem also with the new feature of visiting other data centers. Many active players are now concentrating in certain data centers. However, the absence of group content for players who do not raid or at least do not play the high-end raids is also criticized here.
What is the real state of Final Fantasy XIV?
What do the player numbers say? Square Enix usually only publishes the current number of registered players. Whether these are also actively playing at the moment is not known. Steam charts can also be referred to determine the player count, but they only consider Steam players.
A more comprehensive insight is provided by the Japanese blogger LuckyBancho. He uses officially available numbers from the Final Fantasy XIV support page Lodestone and tracks the number of people who achieve expansion and patch achievement titles. According to this, player fluctuation up to patch 6.4 looks as follows:
Player numbers drop slightly between expansions. So, that fewer players are currently participating is normal in terms of the lifecycle of the DLC. The fact that more players did not return in Endwalker than before can be due to the fact that more players were playing at the peak – but also because patch 6.1 starts a completely new story.
What about the content? Here, the streamers seem to have hit a nerve. Square Enix did publish again a three-part series of 8- and 24-player raids and also the high-end content Dragonsong’s Reprise at the beginning of the expansion. However, the latter actually still belonged to Shadowbringers.
Group content like Eureka and Bozja seems to be sorely missed by players. There, one could have a lot of fun quickly with friends or even just random new acquaintances. Due to the community connection with the relic weapons and the high-end raid for 48 players, all players had reasons to log in regularly.
What’s next for Final Fantasy XIV? In fact, the developers have already announced some of the “missing” and still desired features for the upcoming expansion Dawntrail. In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, the development of a Eureka/Bozja-like content has already been confirmed.
There is currently no known reaction from the developers regarding community requests for the relic weapons.
Here you can watch the trailer for Dawntrail:
More information regarding Dawntrail will be available on October 20 and 21. Then the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival will take place in London. However, it is likely to take a while until the release of the expansion:
Final Fantasy XIV follows, unless delayed by external influences, a strict release schedule. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, expansions were released every two years in the summer. Since the release of patch 6.5 aligns with this rhythm again, the new content is likely to be available only in June 2024.
How do you feel about the current content state of Final Fantasy XIV? Are you still playing? Have you completed all the exciting content for you? Or are you using the possibly longer waiting time between patch 6.5 and the release of 7.0 to catch up? We look forward to your comments!
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