Final Fantasy XIV Crowded With WoW Players; Server Queues and New Record on Steam
Final Fantasy XIV is experiencing a true renaissance, dethroning the king of previous MMORPGs - World of Warcraft. Getting to the servers or even getting in the queue is quite an achievement. Meanwhile, a new activity record was set on Steam.
Final Fantasy XIV, the popular MMORPG from Square Enix, is experiencing a true renaissance. After running out of keyes for the game in the Japanese digital store last week, the title is now available for purchase again. This does not mean that we will immediately join the fun - users have problems with entering the servers, both those located in North America and Europe. Some even can not join the queue of people waiting for the game, or have to wait for several tens of minutes. The "blame" for all this can be placed on... fans of World of Warcraft, a competitive MMORPG from Blizzard, whose community - dissatisfied with the new content - decided to give Square Enix's title a chance.
What made WoW players switch to FFXIV? A big influence on their migration had Zack "Asmongold" - an American streamer associated mainly with World of Warcraft who for some time began to choose just the fourteenth FF. Materials of him playing Square Enix's game were watched in recent weeks by several hundred thousand Internet users. Apparently many of them decided to follow the example of the creator and also try out a different MMORPG. The result? The record, set last week, of 58,000 people simultaneously playing FFXIV on Steam fell and the new one stands at 67 thousand users.
WoW players are going on an adventure. The question is whether they will return. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/oljtts/wow_players_an_unexpected_journey.
Another reason could be that Final Fantasy XIV offers a free trial version, which includes the base game and the Heavensward expansion - and thus the possibility to level up to 60. Constant development of the game is also important. The Japanese regularly release updates with new tasks, and November 23 will mark the release of Endwalker, the fourth expansion for FFXIV.
Growing player base is certainly in Square Enix's interest. Blizzard, on the other hand, will have to act to stop this exodus - update 9.1, released at the end of June, was not very warmly received, not to mention the fact that the community had to wait several months for it. And while it's hard to speculate about the beginning of the end of World of Warcraft, it is worth remembering that over the past three years, 29% of players have left Blizzard's productions (all of them, not just WoW). So this may be the last call for Blizzard to protect itself from the effects of a bigger avalanche.
