SE is definitely not dropping anything in their pants. Their game is so popular they had to remove it from sale. The momentum they have is unmatched with this game. I hope Xbox can revitalize WoW, but it’s a VERY old game at this point. I’m not sure there’s anything they can do other than something like a WoW 2 to really match the quality of FF14, and honestly that feels like a fool’s errand as the market has shown it won’t sustain multiple AAA traditional MMORPG titles at this point in time.
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Your mistake is thinking WoW is dead, when in reality it’s still probably the most played MMORPG in the world. That’s despite struggling through the worst expansion and player drought in it’s history.
Meanwhile, FFXIV had to remove their game from sale primarily because their server architecture is awful and desperately needs upgraded. The game is seriously hampered by spaghetti code from 1.0, but the server issues are even worse - they can only give ~4500 house plots between FCs and individuals on each server, despite individuals alone accounting to ~25000, simply because they need upgraded.
In any case, WoW is one decent expansion away from a turn around, as shown by Legion. WoW 2.0 is superfluous because people don’t want it, they just want WoW to be good again.
They had to remove it because they don’t have the server capacity for it because Square (like most Japanese companies) are extremely incompetent when it comes to anything related to networking and servers. Notice how Blizzard never had this issue even when Wow was at its highest player count because Blizzard prepared accordingly
Wow is an old game but FF14 itself is over a decade old too so it isn’t exactly a spring chicken. Also Wow has changed a lot over the years and has become less of a hardcore RPG and more of an action/RPG that would fit perfectly on controllers and mobile devices.
Yeah people seem to forget that when FF14 originally came out it was this dogshit monstrosity that was so bad that they had to relaunch the game as “Realm Reborn”
If FF14 can come back from that then Wow can easily make a come back from a few bad expansions …at least they never had to 100% overhaul their game like FF14 did
I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying but appreciate the conversation and discussion. My guess is that WoW will never fully recover and continue to bleed users to other games. Thanks again for the chats.
Quick edit: I want to comment specifically about the idea that Japanese companies don’t understand networks and such. Please, that comes across as incredibly short sited and offensive to me as a Japanese blooded person who knows that’s a falsehood. Please be more respectful in your generalizations.
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FF14 experienced a massive spike nobody could’ve seen coming and there is a chip shortage going on. Blizzard would’ve had the same issues getting new servers during a pandemic.
This isn’t just an issue with Endwalker, server issues have plagued FFXIV for years.
I was around for the, now infamous, Raubahn Savage. At the release of Stormblood in 2017, players literally couldn’t progress the story for weeks because the servers were so rammed.
Further, as I detailed above, server architecture is so poor that SE are unable to provide enough housing plots for even a small percentage of players and free companies.
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Raubahn was an issue and I couldn’t understand why SE created those SP instances without adding queues. The servers were hammered, because a lot of players send request at the same time. Are you familiar with DDoS? That’s more or less what happened. Servers weren’t great, but I saw the problem more on the software side. A queue for the SP instances would’ve prevented the content servers going up in fire.
Housing in most of MMO are instanced and FF14 housing is not. The requirements for the backend are different.
That’s all irrelevant, server issues have plagued the game for years and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise or that it’s just because of the pandemic, Endwalker and Asmongold.
During Heavensward release, back in 2015, they had to set auto-logout at 20 minutes idle time. A lengthy phone call, dealing with the kids etc and you were right back to a 6000+ person queue.
They had to bring the auto-logout back for Stormblood and for Shadowbringers, in the latter case it stayed around for 6 months.
The game was never popular enough to blame numbers and even Endwalker’s inflated population is a drop in the bucket compared to other online games.
It’s poor server infrastructure that has never been fixed, only patched up - 500 more plots here and there. Nothing.
Where did I say FF14 never had server issues? It’s disingenuous of you to ignore the chip shortage and blame SE for a issue out of their hands currently.
The auto log out feature is there to save server capacity. SE could’ve opted to not implement it, but then queues for players actively wanting to play would’ve been longer.
They’ve been saying it’s out of their hands for years. SE don’t need you to shill for them, mate.
FFXIV’s server architecture is an abomination and, as the game has shown growth, has never been addressed at all.
You implied originally that FFXIV was removed from sale due to it’s immense popularity, when really the reason is that the server architecture being awful was causing considerably negative word of mouth on the game as people were spending entire evenings trying, and failing, to play a game they have to pay a subscription for.
No SE hasn’t and even if that were the case. The chip shortage can’t be denied. Not even by WoW fans.
“WoW fans” nice. Been subbed to XIV since Heavensward, so you won’t pull the wool over my eyes.
The chip shortage can’t be denied, but they did nothing to fix the issue in 2019 when they blamed DDOS attacks which lasted less than an hour. Or in 2017 when they tried to say only Duty Finder servers were stressed and not the whole game which people spent hours trying to get into. None of these years had chip shortages, both of these years had expansion releases.
Endwalker’s woes are greater, but come from the same source - years of neglect for the server architecture
SE build new datacenters. I think Square didn’t take care fast enough of the issues. You just can’t blame everything on servers and say SE didn’t do anything. Raubahn was a software problem, because the game didn’t prevent the players from DDoS the servers. A queue for the solo instances would’ve prevented the issue. As you can read I still blame SE for raubahn. I just don’t blame the servers.
The current issue is a combination of Endwalker hype and Blizzard making mistakes leading to many players switching over. SE should’ve predicted the hype around their expansion. But nobody can say with a straight face SE should’ve predicted so many of WoW fans come over.
Companies are mostly never prepared for a suprising huge influex of players, because having server capacity for 3 million players when only typically 1 million play is financially dumb AF. SE got caught off guard and then couldn’t order servers fast enough, because of the chip shortage.
The numbers aren’t representative of the actual FF14 current players and just serve as an example.
Console players are much more familiar with Final Fantasy than they are with Warcraft. So I’m not sure if World of Warcraft can compete with FF14… even if Blizzard were to regain some trust and come up with good content. We’re talking about an 18 year old game at this point.
I’m sick of the FF14 charade, MS should push for a renewed WoW, which would cripple FF14 current momentum (a very big chunk of FF14 players are dissatisfied Wow players, who would come back) and doing so damaging SE and Sony interests. Win win.
I havnt played either game and obviously its all subjective but if what you’ve said is true I find it hard to believe FF14 is the better game
Do people actually play MMOs for the story? From an outside perspective, to me they’ve always been about socialising, getting better equipment and “the grind”
I dislike this mentality. Microsoft and Blizzard should pursue a better WoW because it’s good for business and good for players. Not to hurt Square Enix.
For FF fans I hope FF14 stays popular and becomes amazing.
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It’s not like SE and Sony didn’t actively cripple jrpg and mmo scene on Xbox…it’s business, if they still won’t cave in for FF14, the scenario I proposed will be what happens.
You can be great without wishing others to not be great though. Microsoft has two big MMO’s soon. (WoW & ESO:O). Thy don’t need to look at Square to do well in this space.
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