Why is Final Fantasy 14 so popular right now?

Final fantasy 14 has already been broken, but not by its own players. Crowds of new and old players flood the MMO’s servers, resulting in long wait times and even a brief period in which the digital version of the game is out of stock.

This jump in popularity is both unprecedented and unexpected. It is abnormal for an MMO to see a spike in players during the lull between the last major content patch and the upcoming expansion. (For Final Fantasy 14, this is the eagerly awaited Endwalker.) Usually this is when players run out of steam, take breaks, or switch to another MMO. Turns out that’s precisely what’s happening, but the other way around: Disillusioned World of warcraft fans go to Final Fantasy 14 many.

Despite updating Blizzard’s MMO to a new patch, with a new zone and a new raid, less than a month ago, World of warcraft the players are unhappy. Many cite the game’s long eight-month wait for its most recent patch and the subsequent narrative result of an easily predictable cliffhanger. Corn Wow players have expressed frustration with Blizzard’s storytelling for years, a sentiment that overlapped with Final Fantasy 14the base of players marveling at the story arc of Shadowbringer, the previous extension of this MMO.

Others simply followed in the footsteps of many of the game’s most popular content creators, including Twitch streamer Asmongold, making the move from Azeroth to Eorzea. Asmongold himself drew over 200,000 viewers – and many heartbreaks – who followed him as he created a character and went on a rampage in the game’s first storyline. MMO, when your game gets boring, you act like a hummingbird and zoom in on the next sweet thing.

The time was right, because while Square Enix prepares for Endwalkerlaunch in November, it made several improvements to Final Fantasy 14new player experience and maintained constant content updates and events during the pandemic. Anyone who tries to get through the sometimes bland A kingdom reborn History can now do this using flying mounts, and experienced players will be sure to search Target for trading cards as they safely collect in-game cards for a unique mount. And even if you’re on the fence about it, the game is the free trial offer is an inevitable meme. Add to that the upcoming addition of bunny boys (which you can do right now using a free PC benchmarking tool) and a trip to the moon, and it’s easy to see why World of warcraft players could switch to a game with more promise for the future.

And it shows. Final Fantasy 14The workforce of has been trending upward over the past year, according to SteamDB (which only tracks the subset of the player base that chooses to play through Valve’s storefront). On Steam alone – FF14 is also available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 – the game broke its concurrent player record with 47,000 players in early July, and restarted with 67,000 players last week. Add to that the 22 million registered players announced by Square Enix in April, and you have several giant whales“Worth of players now.” The numbers prompted game director Naoki Yoshida to post an open letter on Tuesday explaining how the team plans to reduce wait times and overall server congestion, including taking players offline for being in AFK for too long. .

“Final Fantasy 14 is currently experiencing a dramatic increase in its player base, ”Yoshida wrote. “This increase is not only limited to the global version (served by the Japanese, North American and European data centers), but also to the Chinese and Korean versions operated locally. Recently we have seen a record number of users in all regions, with a large amount of new players starting their adventures.

Final Fantasy 14 the runaway success is hard to attribute to one thing. MMO sentiment has shifted in its favor for some time, especially as games like World of warcraft have put extra effort into storytelling lately, which makes the comparison a lot easier to consider – for better or for worse. Maybe it’s a growing distrust of Blizzard’s ability to tell these stories, or maybe it’s an interest in trying out a game described as a solid JRPG with community mechanics compared to a traditional Western MMO pushing forward. people to trade. Maybe none of this will last. Either way, the players have decided that for now, Final Fantasy 14 is the place to be.