The MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is currently experiencing an influx of new players, some of whom have migrated from the MMORPG World of Warcraft. The head of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, has now commented on the situation and finds the disputes over “the better MMORPG” tedious.
The situation in brief:
- For several weeks now, the servers of Final Fantasy XIV have been overwhelmed by new players. A number of major Twitch streamers , led by Asmongold, have started playing the MMORPG and brought their communities with them.
- Many players who originally came from WoW reported on social media and Reddit that they are now playing FFXIV and love it. The MMORPG from Japan has become a kind of sanctuary for WoW players. The strong increase in player numbers has led to records on Steam and server issues in the game.
- Some FFXIV fans took this opportunity to declare WoW dead, as it seems that the MMORPG is apparently losing players. WoW fans, on the other hand, point out that their game remains the largest MMORPG with the most active players.
The head of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, commented on WoW in a stream.
“I don’t think we’ve ‘defeated’ WoW”
This is what the head of FFXIV says: The discussion about which MMORPG is the winner or loser has also reached the executive level of FFXIV. This topic also came up in a stream and Yoshida had something to say about it:
“This whole discussion about surpassing WoW is wrong and, to be honest, tedious,” said the head of FFXIV. When asked if FFXIV has now beaten WoW, he replied with a clear denial. He does not believe that this is the case.
At the peak of WoW, the maximum number of subscriptions was about 12 million. Not just free accounts, there were 12 million subscriptions. We can never compete with that.
We are growing at a rate that even surprises me. It’s almost eerie. Although FFXIV surpasses its peak almost every day, WoW is the Mount Everest, completely out of our reach.
FFXIV Director Naoki Yoshida
Yoshida also stated that Final Fantasy XIV would not exist without WoW. It was the game that he and his team looked up to because the design of WoW had completely changed the MMORPG genre. Therefore, they aimed to become like Blizzard’s MMORPG.
The strength of the well-known Final Fantasy games lay in the story content. When the 1.0 version of FFXIV failed and the development team set about rebooting it, they aimed to create a Final Fantasy WoW.
The director is pleased that the work he and his team have put into FFXIV is now paying off and that the MMORPG is attracting large numbers of new players.
Final Fantasy XIV continually breaks its player record on Steam
Here is the current state of FFXIV: The influx of new players in FFXIV does not appear to be diminishing, at least for now. The player records on Steam are being broken every week. The current peak stands at 67,019 concurrent players (via Steamcharts).
These are just the Steam numbers. Since FFXIV can also be played through its own launcher and on the consoles PS4 and PS5, the actual number of players is likely significantly higher.
Moreover, more major streamers are now jumping on the hype train, announcing that they will start playing FFXIV or return to the MMORPG.
Meanwhile, the influx of players is causing server issues:
- There are regularly long queues of over 500 players during login
- New players have difficulty creating characters on their desired servers, as those are often full
- Lobby servers are having problems loading character data, which can lead to error messages
To alleviate server load, Square Enix implemented a measure with update 5.58 on July 20, where players who are AFK for more than 30 minutes are automatically logged out.
How many players does FFXIV have? There are no official numbers of active subscriptions for FFXIV. Square Enix only releases the number of all registered accounts, which has been over 22 million since April 2021. However, this number also includes deactivated accounts and bots or gold sellers.
According to an unofficial estimate by the Japanese player LuckyBancho, there are currently about 1.2 million paying players active in FFXIV. This estimate is based on character data that he was able to extract from FFXIV’s official site Lodestone database (via Twitter).
All characters over level 60, whose stats or inventory have changed since April 2021, such as through level-ups or new mounts, were counted. Newcomers and free trial accounts were not included in his census. The numbers should therefore be treated with caution.
What do you think of Yoshida’s view of the situation? What is your opinion on the sudden hype around FFXIV? Let us know in the comments.
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