Current Server Population?

[Braedon]

I was thinking about re-subbing early before patch 5.3 drops but I'm concerned very few people are playing. I don't want long queue times for instances, does it feel longer to queue for things than it did a few months ago? Does your server feel as alive as it did when 5.2 came out?

[Zunnoab #931]

When I made my character, I had a short queue to log in on Behemoth. It might be one of the more populated servers though?

Also, there's some sort of cross-server play available now for servers on the same data center, if I understand it correctly. There's an option to "visit" other worlds at the crystal transport thingies.

I have like ten hours in game total so obviously I'm brand new.

[Aethervox]

Originally posted by Braedon:

I was thinking about re-subbing early before patch 5.3 drops but I'm concerned very few people are playing. I don't want long queue times for instances, does it feel longer to queue for things than it did a few months ago? Does your server feel as alive as it did when 5.2 came out?

The population remains very healthy imo, but I can only speak for Eu data centers.
Que times, as always, depend on the job you play. Tanks an healers get instant ques while as a dps I generally get in dungeons in around 10-15 minutes tops.
Honestly even during content droughts I've never felt like the game's dead, and I've been playing for a good while.

[Jin-]

Very healthy. There is really not real queues for most servers. Just a bottlenecks to reduce many people log in at the same time. On Odin there is always some 10-20 people bottleneck while the server is nowhere near full

[Om3ga-Z3ro]

In Zodiark, I only get from 10-20 and that takes less than half a minute and most of the capital cities always have players hanging around so it never looks dead or barren.

[Rouge]

If you go to steamdb you can check the chart and see the playerbase overall is stronger this year than last year and any year before on average, having not dropped below 20k players at any time in 2020. Shadowbringers DLC release just over a year ago triggered a peak of 40k but things tapered off and hit lows of 15k afterwards, so 2020's range of 20k~26k players is quite impressive.

[Silly]

https://ffxivcensus.com/

Check "active characters" if you want to get a decent picture of the game's population.
As for my personal experience...
I'm on Ragnarok and during prime time Limsa (and other cities to an extent) are brimming with degenerates so I'm guessing the game's population is doing fine right now.

[Minka]

Plenty of people are still playing, even amongst the longest content drought we've had due to the current worldly situation. Of course the population will still vary by server while also overloading the current Road to 70 boosting server during prime time hours, but the data centers are all quite healthy and regularly pulling people together for roulettes and queues.

You can expect that to spike up when 5.3 hits on August 11th, but you'll still hit the queues readily when the daily and weekly reset timers hit in the meantime... and always be suffering for DPS being the most played role with the longest queue times.

[Aethervox]

Originally posted by Zofian:

If you go to steamdb you can check the chart and see the playerbase overall is stronger this year than last year and any year before on average, having not dropped below 20k players at any time in 2020. Shadowbringers DLC release just over a year ago triggered a peak of 40k but things tapered off and hit lows of 15k afterwards, so 2020's range of 20k~26k players is quite impressive.

The steam stats only give insight to a small percentage of the playerbase, keep in mind that there's a separate non-steam version (that in my experience more people tend to prefer) and also there's a ps4 version, and all platforms play on the same servers, together.

[Jonas™]

Jenova (aether) usually has a log in queue in the 10-50 range, or about 1-3 minutes depending on the time of day, that usually goes up to ~5 minutes the week of a patch, but I've never seen it longer than 7 minutes in the last year or so. Aether cluster overall seems to have a very healthy population and relatively short activity queue times for tank/healer, DPS will always have much longer queues.

Granted, that was a month ago when my sub ran out, but I doubt it has changed much as it was pretty stable all spring. I'm waiting until a week or so before 5.3 to re-sub and get an alt ready to try the new MSQ and hopefully get past level 20 for the first time since finishing it on my main.

[Braedon]

Originally posted by Silly:

https://ffxivcensus.com/

Check "active characters" if you want to get a decent picture of the game's population.
As for my personal experience...
I'm on Ragnarok and during prime time Limsa (and other cities to an extent) are brimming with degenerates so I'm guessing the game's population is doing fine right now.

I see. From everyone's reactions it seems like even during this long wait for patch 5.3, queue times are normal. I've been itching to play so I will sub. Thank you everyone for your input.

[Mandodo]

Originally posted by Krila:

Originally posted by Zofian:

If you go to steamdb you can check the chart and see the playerbase overall is stronger this year than last year and any year before on average, having not dropped below 20k players at any time in 2020. Shadowbringers DLC release just over a year ago triggered a peak of 40k but things tapered off and hit lows of 15k afterwards, so 2020's range of 20k~26k players is quite impressive.

The steam stats only give insight to a small percentage of the playerbase, keep in mind that there's a separate non-steam version (that in my experience more people tend to prefer) and also there's a ps4 version, and all platforms play on the same servers, together.

There not even counting the windows version which came out first and most have, not the mac users although im sure its low there, and PS3/PS4 users which there are a ♥♥♥♥ ton. Most have hundreds of FF XIV groups with all full members and are active. Steam is a small percentage since it only came to steam in 2014, like, 6 months I think, after launch, by then most had already bought the game and got really far and didnt want to re start. That and most tell everybody to NOT buy the game via steam too.

So I know there is way more that 20k - 25k players. Each server holds 50k (yoshi p said it one time, no im not looking for the famitsu article from a million years ago)and some are still locked from creating characters.

I'd say as of right now, waiting on the patch, etc, even I have not played in 3 weeks and I been on since beta with over 10k hours total, we got about 250k playing, maybe a little more. ACTIVE right now that is.

Of course when 5.3 hits, we'll get those queues to get in being number 666 in line LOL and we'll be back to a million or a little less, id say more because relic is coming.

But usually, at peak times, about 1.5 million (expansions, big patches).

In lull times, about 250k to 500k ACTIVELY playing daily.

Still plenty of people to play with and get stuff done too.

[dr46onfusion]

Originally posted by Krila:

Originally posted by Braedon:

I was thinking about re-subbing early before patch 5.3 drops but I'm concerned very few people are playing. I don't want long queue times for instances, does it feel longer to queue for things than it did a few months ago? Does your server feel as alive as it did when 5.2 came out?

The population remains very healthy imo, but I can only speak for Eu data centers.
Que times, as always, depend on the job you play. Tanks an healers get instant ques while as a dps I generally get in dungeons in around 10-15 minutes tops.
Honestly even during content droughts I've never felt like the game's dead, and I've been playing for a good while.

EU has more gamers on average on MMOs than NA because there's a greater younger generation of newcomers to the internet in general. Because people's priorities changed and it's not simply playing games that is a priority now that they have a job or committed to life, people in the West have bigger things to worry about.

The pandemic did make people stay indoor and use the internet or play games a lot more though, so in the future when people need to 'get out' and continue their lives after the pandemic, the population levels in games will plummet, especially if it comes into question your finances and your ability to afford to play games.

Gaming is a luxury.

[Mandodo]

Originally posted by Kai:

Originally posted by Krila:

The population remains very healthy imo, but I can only speak for Eu data centers.
Que times, as always, depend on the job you play. Tanks an healers get instant ques while as a dps I generally get in dungeons in around 10-15 minutes tops.
Honestly even during content droughts I've never felt like the game's dead, and I've been playing for a good while.

EU has more gamers on average on MMOs than NA because there's a greater younger generation of newcomers to the internet in general. Because people's priorities changed and it's not simply playing games that is a priority now that they have a job or committed to life, people in the West have bigger things to worry about.

The pandemic did make people stay indoor and use the internet or play games a lot more though, so in the future when people need to 'get out' and continue their lives after the pandemic, the population levels in games will plummet, especially if it comes into question your finances and your ability to afford to play games.

Gaming is a luxury.

Maybe, before the pandemic we did average 2.5 million active according to Yoshi P with the launch of Shadowbringers.

I don't think the pandemic gave us time to play that we didnt, we just have MORE of it.

I'm in the US and we work and play. Got a dude in the FC who logs in from 8pm to about 1am or 2am Monday through Friday but is on all weekend.

Were in a lull right now until August 11th.

Hardcore players with tons of time and play since beta, etc, etc, are taking a break so it feels low pop right now. On top of that, the big reason for this break is that 5.3 was ALREADY supposed to launch but kept getting pushed back.


This patch cycle is VERY unusual and the lull is causing us to take a break until the live letter gets us excited to log back in.

I want to edit here, I'm not saying the game sucks or nobody plays or that because I am taking a break or whatnot. Not the case, were just in an unusual lull right now awaiting content we NEED.

Although any new players will have about 500 or so hours of content to go through.

But, I have noticed an explosion in EU players, especially migrating to the NA data centers too as we have a ton of EU players on Aether.

[Aethervox]

Originally posted by Kai:

Originally posted by Krila:

The population remains very healthy imo, but I can only speak for Eu data centers.
Que times, as always, depend on the job you play. Tanks an healers get instant ques while as a dps I generally get in dungeons in around 10-15 minutes tops.
Honestly even during content droughts I've never felt like the game's dead, and I've been playing for a good while.

EU has more gamers on average on MMOs than NA because there's a greater younger generation of newcomers to the internet in general. Because people's priorities changed and it's not simply playing games that is a priority now that they have a job or committed to life, people in the West have bigger things to worry about.

The pandemic did make people stay indoor and use the internet or play games a lot more though, so in the future when people need to 'get out' and continue their lives after the pandemic, the population levels in games will plummet, especially if it comes into question your finances and your ability to afford to play games.

Gaming is a luxury.

Tbh you make looooots of assumptions lol.
You can’t really talk about the eu in general as one big entity, since there are so many countries and differences in culture and economy, especially from a western vs eastern european viewpoint. Besides, so far every census have shown that the na population of the game is bigger than eu.
There are lot’s of young people, yeah, just like everywhere else but 90% of them can’t really afford or want to play a sub game. Gaming as a whole isn’t that big of a luxury anymore, remember most people play f2p games like lol or fortnite, consoles especially are pretty cheap.
Subscription based games however are a bit of a luxury, but that has to do more with our currency being in a bad spot nowadays than anything else but yeah, the hungarian community in the game is pretty small, around a 100 people overall which isn’t too much for a country of 10million.
Wow is still really popular here though.

I don’t really get your analogy about priorities and all that. You think europe is some sort of paradise where people have nothing to worry about and they don’t work etc and just sit and play all day? Lmao
I attend university, work a part time job and yet I get to play a few hours everyday without any problems, and it’s not even my only hobby.
So i don’t really see how working or having a family interferes with... having any hobbies I guess? Except if you work like 10-12 hours a day, then I feel bad for you but I don’t think that’s the norm. But a standard 8 hour work day ( from 8-16 for example) gives you a fair amount of free time.
Most people in my fc are in their late 20s - early 30s, many even have kids at this point and they too can drop in and play fairly consistently. It all boils down to managing your time efficiently.

But the most important thing is that I’ve been through my patch cycles, content droughts etc and I’ve never felt like the game was dead or the ques were way too long to be unplayable... and this is what op asked about.

[Zunnoab #931]

If this game has/had 2.5 million active users that's way bigger than I ever realized.