It is normal for the ups and downs of an MMO’s player count to correlate with the release of expansions and the fallow years in between, so it is not surprising that Morning trailthe new extension to Final Fantasy 14has boosted the player numbers for Square Enix’s ten-year-old MMO. But despite mixed reactions by players who may not have expected it to set a new record for concurrent players.
The message comes from FF14 Producer and director Naoki Yoshida, delivered in a official blog post on July 4. The post is mostly about upcoming changes to the game’s many jobs, but in the introduction, Yoshida takes a second to thank Warriors of Light for exploring Morning trail, and reveals the good news about player numbers. “With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users that we haven’t seen since the release of . A reborn kingdom in 2013,” he writes. A reborn kingdom was the relaunch of FF14 after Version 1.0 was closed at the end of 2012, but Yoshida did not give any concrete figures.
The news is quite shocking to me, considering how different the reactions to Morning trailThe expansion is something like a new beginning for the MMO, after a decades-long history with Endwalker in 2021. Instead of the universe-destroying threats that Warriors of Light have faced in the last few expansions, Morning trail is a return to the good old adventure, this time through the Latin American inspired environment of Tural.
The new content has less stakes than previous expansions and makes the player a supporting character, which can make the focus stand out about the new character Wuk Lamat. Because of these changes, the expansion was incredibly controversial. Not to mention that as a new player, you can’t dive right into the supposed “fresh start” of the MMO unless you buy a story and level skip. I can’t quite figure out what that might be about The Expansion that got everyone and their mother playing, unlike critically loved and widely discussed expansions like Shadowbringer.
In any case, I’m happy to see that the decade-old MMO is so successful. Hopefully a good portion of these new and returning players will stick around, no matter what happens next. Morning trail‘s new beginning.
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