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According to an industry insider, Daniel Ahmad, Square-Enix, and in particular, Final Fantasy XIV is seeing increased growth in players. Conversely, an Activision-Blizzard report has revealed that WoW and other properties are losing active viewers.
Back in December 2021, World of Warcraft went from 26m to 24m active players and this is just part of an ongoing trend of the game losing players.
Rise of Final Fantasy XIV, decline of World of Warcraft
According to numbers released by Activision Blizzard, they are seeing a consistent decline in players in WoW. The drop from 26M to 24M is on top of a 13% decline back in November 2021. These numbers are not good for WoW, but they can be corrected.
On the other side of the spectrum, Final Fantasy XIV is so popular it had to temporarily stop sales for being too popular and has seen “Substantial growth in the number of paying subscribers” according to Daniel Ahmad.
The latest expansion, Endwalker is doing exceptionally well, whereas after a year, World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion is gearing up for its final major patch. Perhaps more users will return to the game when World of Warcraft mobile launches, which was teased during the quarterly earnings report.
What could be causing this shift in MMO players?
Potential reasons for loss of WoW players and rise of Final Fantasy XIV users
Dearth of riveting content
World of Warcraft continues to lose players, but it’s not a change impossible to reverse. Fans of the franchise want the game to succeed, but there are problems with the MMO at this time. Shadowlands has been out for about a year and will only receive two Major content updates.
One of them is on the way, with Patch 9.2, Eternity’s End. It will culminate in a fight with the Jailer, but it took an incredibly long time to get new, interesting content for the game. This is on top of the current gameplay loop being heavily focused around Daily Quests. This has been the way of the MMO for several expansions, and ultimately winds up being repetitive.
This is the second WoW expansion in the game's lifetime to only have two major updates, alongside Warlords of Draenor. Players may see a minor patch or two afterwards, however.
Players have no choice but to do daily quests if they want to improve their gear and do more content, and logging in every day to do them is important. Receiving such a paltry amount of new content could be a major reason the game is losing active players.
The recent Activision-Blizzard lawsuits have probably not helped the company’s reputation and may have led to players stopping their subscriptions.
Final Fantasy delivering on the promise
On the other side of that coin is Final Fantasy XIV, which has already seen two patches with more content to delve into for Endwalker. Final Fantasy XIV regularly adds content to its expansions, as well as more story quests.
It’s not a far leap in logic to see the loss of WoW players and the gain of Final Fantasy XIV players, and deduce that many of those players have shifted over to Square-Enix’s MMO. It’s an MMO that had to halt sales due to just how popular it was.
There’s always something to do in Final Fantasy XIV, and the steady flow of content is a solid reason for players to come and try the game for the first time, and ultimately stick around. Square-Enix listens to what their audience wants and there has been a formula for success going from A Realm Reborn all the way to Endwalker.
Both games can be great, and players want their preference to succeed, but WoW has some work to do if it wants to pull its players back in, as Shadowlands rolls on.
