Final Fantasy XIV was overrun by players a few months ago, and today the servers are reportedly empty

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The next expansion has already been announced, the current one is in its final stages: The MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is currently in a rest phase. However, the community is not completely satisfied and some streamers are speaking out.

What recently happened in the Final Fantasy XIV community? Final Fantasy XIV reached a new peak in player numbers with the Endwalker expansion released at the end of 2021. The MMORPG was extremely popular.

Since then, patches 6.1 to 6.5, which belong to the expansion, have been released. These contain more content such as the 8 and 24 man raids, the new relic weapons, the trials, dungeons and story content. However, the game currently seems to be in a content drought and player exodus, which is why some streamers have now spoken out.

Zepla on the current status of Final Fantasy XIV

What does Zepla say? The American streamer Zepla is one of the largest content creators in the English-speaking Final Fantasy XIV community. She released a video about a month ago in which she expressed her disappointment with the patch content in Endwalker.

She makes the following points:

  • The patch story would not be of the usual quality.
  • “Traditional” MMORPG content would be missing. Among other things, she mentions Eureka and Shadowbringers Bozja, which were released with the Stormblood expansion.
  • The “relic weapon grind” is reduced to pure currency exchange, making obtaining the weapon less satisfying.
  • Since Final Fantasy
  • The Island Sanctuary was not the cozy game section of the MMORPG as expected, but rather a management simulator.

    • What are Eureka and Bozja?

    Eureka and Bozja are additional content in their own instances. Both contents consist of several zones that were slowly added over the various patches. In it, players face hundreds of opponents, special events and even challenging 48-man raids alone or in groups. The zones have a story based on the main story, belong to the relic grind of their respective expansions and can be used to level up the jobs.

    For Zepla, these reasons are responsible for fewer and fewer players logging in. She also sees a vicious circle in this: those who used to come again and again during the patches are now stopping playing much earlier due to the lack of content. If you then return, you will find an empty game and log out again.

    The Island Sanctuary is your own island that needs to be expanded and managed. You can visit your friends’ islands, but there is no reason to do so within the game.

    How do other Final Fantasy XIV streamers feel about this? In addition to Zepla, other streamers and YouTubers also spoke up.

    Xenosys Vex, a self-described first-time Final Fantasy XIV player, makes similar points in his own video. According to Xenosys, players are simply bored, which he also attributes to the lack of current, Bozja-like content.

    Most other content creators, however, only react to the videos from Zepla and Xenosys:

    What does the community say?

    The respective videos on YouTube are very well received by the respective audience. Here some examples:

  • doctorcis3510 on Zepla’s video: “As a player who recently reached the endgame for the first time, I’m having a great time and feel like I have a lot to do. But, looking back, very little of what I do post-patch is Endwalker content.”
  • vrahnkeneisenbach9148 on Zepla’s video: “My problem with the game’s development philosophy for a while now is that they introduce a lot of cool, unique ideas, but they introduce them as dead-end content that entertains you for a short time and then is done with forever, rather than integrating them directly into the core gameplay.”
  • Longlius on Xenosys Vexs video: “People also forget that the time between the last patch of Shadowbringers and Endwalker was unusual. A lot of people came to try out FFXIV during that time, and so the game felt much more alive than it normally does in the pre-expansion doldrums.”
  • batwingpie on Xenosys Vexs video: “Having played through ten years of content in one sitting can lead to unrealistic expectations of the current content.”

    • The patch content is also being talked about on Reddit. Recently, a discussion started in the sub-Reddit “ffxivdiscussion” about the fact that many long-term friends said goodbye during the patches – for reasons mentioned by Zepla, among others.

    In the discussion, many also see the problem with the new feature for visiting other data centers. Many active players would now be concentrated in specific data centers. But here too, the lack of group content for players who don’t raid or at least don’t play the high-end raids is criticized.

    What is the real status of Final Fantasy XIV?

    What do the player numbers say? Square Enix usually only publishes the current number of registered players. It is not known whether they are currently actively playing. To determine the number of players, the Steam charts can also be used, which in turn only take Steam players into account.

    The Japanese blogger LuckyBancho offers a more comprehensive insight. This uses officially available numbers from the Final Fantasy XIV support site Lodestone and tracks the number of people who receive expansion and patch achievement titles. Accordingly, the player fluctuation until patch 6.4 looks like this:

    The number of players therefore always drops slightly between expansions. The fact that there are currently fewer players is normal given the life cycle of the DLC. The fact that more players didn’t come back in Endwalker than before may be because more players played towards the peak – but also because a completely new story begins with patch 6.1.

    What about the content? The streamers seem to have hit a nerve here. Square Enix once again published a three-part 8- and 24-man raid series and, at the beginning of the expansion, also the high-end content Dragonsong’s Reprise. The latter actually belonged to Shadowbringers.

    The current 24-man raid revolves around the previously mysterious world of gods from Final Fantasy XIV. Otherwise, it is a classic raid based on a tried and tested model.

    Group content like Eureka and Bozja seem to be really missing from players. There you could have a lot of fun in a very short time together with friends or just random new acquaintances. The combination of relic weapons and the high-end raid for 48 people gave all players reasons to log in regularly.

    What’s next for Final Fantasy XIV? In fact, the developers have already announced some of the “missing” and desired features for the upcoming Dawntrail expansion. In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, for example, the development of Eureka/Bozja-like content has already been confirmed.

    There is currently no reaction from the developers regarding the community’s wishes for the relic weapons.

    You can see the trailer for Dawntrail here:

    Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail – Trailer for the new expansion

    More videos

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    More information about Dawntrail will be available on October 20th and 21st. Then the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival will take place in London. However, it will probably be a while before the expansion is released:

    Final Fantasy XIV follows a strict release schedule unless postponed by external influences. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, expansions appeared every two years in the summer. Since the release of patch 6.5 fits into this rhythm again, the new content will probably not be available until June 2024.

    How are you feeling about the current content status of Final Fantasy XIV? Are you (still) playing? Have you already completed all the content that is exciting to you? Or are you using the probably longer waiting time between patch 6.5 and the release of 7.0 to catch up? We would be happy to receive your comments!

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