Server Pops...

Don't need a linkshell after nerf. Made a PUG and killed bee + 5 NM with nearly 10 min left a few weeks ago with only 5 +3 songs, all PUG. Some ppl are just avg players randomly joined and I didn't know them.

But it is kinda a pain to get delve win with PUG now, most well geared players with experience quit for 14 after gear capped from delve.

took 3 tries, pre-dex patch not just pre-skill, and i was keeping track of 8 characters during first win

i know people like to pretend mmos are hard so their achievements mean more, but the only difficult part pre-nerfs was finding 4 DD with enough accuracy gear and making sure the other jobs were properly briefed on role..

didn't even need amazing gear or anything, i had no augments above rank 2 and no salvage gear

this is not content that needs to be weakened, the collective inability of the playerbase should have been allowed to improve instead of babied through it.. insert some cliche line about abyssea era spoiling people with access to everything they want

***isn't hard but getting 18 people on the same page sure is

the amount of things any one person/character needs to manage is extremely small, given enough time people will learn their roles, it was just nerfed prematurely

some people are just plain idiots, but it's not as many as you would assume, shout groups just make people look worse than they are because nobody has experience

665 to 670 players tonight on Bismarck, 6:44 PM PST.

So, since my September 4th. post, we are close to the 700 mark for a weekday. The 455 population posted by Helel a few days ago is the lowest I've seen so far for a weekday since FFXIV launched.

Why are you keeping track of this exactly?

Some people don't live in denial.

make ochains and harps...

To see if it'll go back up again. I did it before when Aion and FFXIV v1.0 launched.

I didn't see population go back up (even if a small amount) usually a month or two after another MMO launches, then it evens out again. However, this is the largest drop I've seen since 2009 (Aion) and 2010 (FFXIV v1.0).

Comparatively, when I checked population way, way back in 2006/2007, we were at a peak of 2400 to 2500 players. Highest I've seen was pushing 3000 players during an HNM King spawn night. (Remember those days? The days when you'd hit R2000-plus just sitting in Dragon's Aery with 200-plus other players hoping your Linkshell would claim Fafnir or Nidhogg.)

So, yeah, I've been keeping up on server population for quite some time. Why? I don't know, boredom perhaps? Curiosity?

Plus, a part of my personality other than being a curious person is that I'm very observant, like a scientist poring over lab experiments and gathering data. It's always interesting to see how the server population fluctuates. I've seen the population dip during Aion, FFXIV v1.0 and as far back as when Wrath of the Lich King and The Burning Crusade was released. These drops are normal and expected.

However, like I've said before, this is the largest (even sharpest) drop I've seen in server population when an MMO is released. FFXI is competing against another MMO from the same company right now.

Let's see who wins out in the end. Will the Bismarck population go back up a month or two after FFXIV ARR's release or will it continue to decline? Better yet, does FFXIV ARR have the same lasting popularity FFXI did during its prime and continue go up? Or, will players burn through the content as quickly as we have done for Seekers of Adoulin content and players quit a month to three months after FFXIV's release?

It's time to find out.

When you play as long as I have, and I'm sure you and many others have been playing FFXI a very long time, anyone would be curious if there are still players around to do things with in the game. Before when the population was very high-- around 2000 to 2500-- I rarely see the same player two or three times in a single day. Nowadays, I see the same mules, the same players in the same places I usually see them on a daily basis more than once-- East and West Adoulin, Lower Jeuno, and Port Jeuno.

That's how small the server has gotten lately since I've returned to this game in April. It's a very big difference compared to the game back in 2006 up until 2010.

Ignore him he is the official I must defend FFXI in order to appease SE to prove how loyal I am poster.

And you are the idiot who thinks he's cool for harassing people on this board. Idk why you aren't banned. You bring nothing to this site except harass people.

How exactly do I ***up a thread? You don't see me going into any FFXIV threads and declaring it dead, crap game, etc. I gave my opinion in one FFXIV thread this last week and even said it was fun. I don't harass anyone like this clown lol.

Draylo's FFXI 5evar are better than whoever fonewear is

Because being mindlessly and at least as faithfully anti-ffxi on an ffxi fansite makes you edgy and interesting.

If your spending more time sticking a stake into the heart of FFXI on a forum instead of actually doing something in game to me thats the real problem.

Idk about stakes in hearts. More like an annoying *** flies. They won't be doing anything in-game tho because they've quit already.

I have been posting the same information about server populations in a short/annoying way plenty of times, a lot of players are aware of this too, same informations are posted on ffxi official forums. But ffxi hardcore fans get butthurt too much to accept it.

Ffxi used to be playable and enjoyable @ 2006-2007 @Lakshmi with 3000+ subs online almost/always. Now most servers barely reaches 800's. A server merge needs to be done asap

Let this sink in for a minute or two: When Seraph merged with Bismarck back in 2010, our population peaked at around 3000 to 3200 players on a weekend. During a weekday, we were averaging 2400 to 2600 players alongside Seraph players. (Imagine Dragon's Aery the days after server merge and you get an idea how crazy it was back then with so many players on Bismarck...)

Fast forward to 2013, post-Aug. 27th., and we are averaging around 600 to 800 players on a weekday. On a weekend, we are averaging now around 800 to 1000 players. Peak is and was 1200 to a little over 1300 players, but I have not seen that in two weeks now since the FFXIV's Early Access weekend ended.

When I returned to FFXI last April, I saw around 2000 players at peak.

So, let's do the math.

That's around 33% to 38% drop in population between March 2010 (server merge) to April 2013 (when I returned).

Between March 2010 and August/September 2013, that's between 67% to 75% drop in server population if going between both highs and lows for a weekend.

For a weekday, that comes to around 67% to 77% drop in population.

It is worrying if no one wants to admit it. Like I've said before, I rarely see Wildkeeper Reives shouts nowadays. One of my Linkshells, two-thirds of the LS quit for FFXIV. The other LS, approximately half the LS is gone now or just MIA for no reason. On my Friend List, two-thirds of my friends spread across different servers are gone since FFXIV launched.



There used to be around 3 times that amount...

REMs being outdated was a huge blow to this game. REMs became the standard the game was designed around for 11 f*cking years.

That's like throwing away the meter and making the standard for measuring distance the furlong, then throwing the furlong out for the nautical mile. It's stupid, clumsy, and poorly thought out.

On top of that, REMs offered two things that new gear doesn't.

1) Longevity and variety of content.

If they were still the most powerful, large amounts of people would still be making them and it takes a lot more effort in man hours to make one Mythic than it does to make an alliance worth of Senbaak Nagans. Not only that, but there was a plethora of content to do with many options to choose from.

2) Quality investment of time.

People felt they were investing time into something that would be worthwhile. You were going for the best and you'd eventually get the best. Now you can only obtain the best gear until next update. If people wanted to have all progress wiped out every few months they wouldn't have picked FFXI as their online game of choice, they'd be running ladders in f*cking Diablo.


Also, thorny likes to say everything is easy but if he couldn't bot/rmt he'd be some scrub who sported full WAR AF right up until he quit years ago. Nobody likes him but everyone around him likes the stuff he gives them. So if he couldn't bot/buy his way to gil, and by extension friends, nor could he program bots to fight with him, thorny would think the game were a hell of a lot less "easy."

The game have been decreasing population before R.E.M fiasco, but yes.. A significant % of players quit ffxi because of that too. SE stated that new weapons wont be out performed by REMs tho, ppl shouldn't bother upgrading REMs even if they get updated

Denial of what? They didn't release all the next contents of ffxi. The one who lives in denial is you cause you're lying to yourself : you keep trolling cause you're bored or maybe someone did something to you in 11 that affected your ego.
FF14 is cool, alright just go there and play it. Something tells me you're bored enough to keep trolling in this thread.

I'm pretty sure the dev of 11 knows whats happening considering he works on 14 as well. It must be a very strange position to be in.

I always thought the idea of REM's was huge bad idea because at what point can you surpass that gear and not piss off people? Which I think
introduces a question, how long should a "epic" piece of gear stay the top before something comes along and takes it down? 2 months? 6? a year?

While I believe Tanaka's gear progression was WAAAAAY TOO SLOW (ebody,kings,relics '05-'06). The new dev is spitting out new stuff every 2 months,might be a little too dam fast.

I would really like a reason to do meebles and other old content again,I would also like it if they hired a few more people and dropped god awful PS2 which holds back such simple things like storage issues for this game

I don't think Bahamut has a population issue...esp since Ramuh jumped on with us, its been pretty good and JP hours are still extremely active

NA times hover around 800-1kish, JP times are nearly 2k always. I like how all these people throw around the "omg my server is always dead with 600" ***, yet neglect to give population numbers for other time zones. I can't imagine server merges, simply because while the NA players could use it, it'd make things worse for the JPs. Hey, lets merge so NAs can have 2k and JPs have 4k...yeahhhh. Some serious internet gangstas in this thread, pulling out their kindergarten math skills and demanding things of a game that they're not even playing.


This. This so very f***ing much. Lets add weapons that we can't outdate... Seriously? What's even better, I'd wager most of the one's bitching about them in this very thread (or the other Opinions thread, like the guy QQing that casuals can't have the best weapons, because Emps are weak now...f***ing lawls) don't even have 99 RMEs. The QQ gonna fly even harder when oh noes, I have to work MOAR to make my shiny useful? Oh noes, whateva em I gunna do T____T.

RME's, old school gear that got the synergy aug treatment, those things are the real culprits of the problem. They kept the idea around that hey, decade old content is still useful, and not only useful, its da best! Matsui saw a stagnating game, one where new content was avoided or rarely played, and old content was what was used to gear. Is that fun? Honestly? I can't imagine one mother f***er coming in this thread and honest to god saying they miss grinding Dynamis, they miss old drop rate Salvage, they miss throwing scraps at old abjuration/sky gear, so that the guy next to them can go 1/1 and you go 1/300. Who would call any of that fun? You can't even call it a challenge or hard, its annoying!

Yeah, FFXI was unique in its decision to allow gear to remain relevant for so long, but that's changed. There's still plenty of old pieces that matter, for now. I'm glad to see the nail put in that old coffin, its time to move the f*** on, leave that old content that some of us have played for a DECADE in the past. We're done with it.

A decade of content that was still enjoyed regularly up until SoA, but now with the reward of inv -1. There's no carrot, only the stick.


And grinding the ***in delve is any different? Or the same 3 skirmish missions for that matter.

To play devil's advocate the small burst of content from SoA was pretty enjoyable; reives, skirmish, WKR, collecting gear/KIs from field nms, getting the boss KIs. However mastering this handful of content does not take much and once the majority of the server has cleared it, there is not really much of an incentive to revisit it. (I'm looking at you WKR). And with the lack of any kind of long term goal many players are feeling: "What is there to do?" and many of them are just simply not logging in.

That being said Fenrir has ~600-700 through the NA hours 8am-Mid peaking out at 1100 on saturday

PS. Oldschool Dynamis was fun as hell, getting a massive amount of people together 1/2 times a week and blowing ***up was a blast. Especially if you had a solid core group.

As far as grinding goes, in the short term, as a player who's cleared it, I found it all fun. Even Yorcia Skirmish was fun for like...5 runs, admittedly. They wanted to do something different with it, and it flopped. Hopefully the point behind making it so piss poor easy to get a solid baseline of gear is so that next update, they can release harder content under the assumption that everyone doing said content, will at least have Skirmish ilvl gear, or higher. All that +def, +eva, +meva, +MDB, +skill on weapons needs to be used for something, cause right now all it does is make us pretty OP compared to all previous content (Delve included.) I still find enjoyment in Delve, but more from going with odd setups or finding fun in the dumb mistakes people make that used to result in a wipe or timing out; now its just Happy Gilmore "youuuuu jackass" moments that results in some laughs and fun. The fact that its still profitable helps as well, I'm sure.

I'll agree 100%, if we're talking about endgame type players. But the majority of the server hasn't cleared Delve, though WKRs and Skirmish they have. The number of 5/5 bayld and skirmish geared characters is pretty staggering at this point, compared to optimized characters using the best pieces of new and old.

Bahamut and Odin might be known to be very populated servers, but there's others(like Valefor)that are Desert Island XI.

And we're done already with Adoulin too. What to do now other than grind Monstrosity? Content isn't being planned in a very well manner, this shift that Matsui team applied to the game isn't working very well(for now).

Fixed.


And lol@ "game's better without REM comment", enjoy your REMless FFXI with 400 ppl per server if it's not fixed.