Valefor.Prothescar said:
»XIV's # of estimated active players (lv61+ with recent minion/mount/title acquisition to filter inactive accounts and free trial players; catches some casuals and will obviously cut a large portion of new players but it is the only reasonable way to get any sort of accurate estimate that isn't based entirely on marketing terminology and conjecture) has increased by over 30% globally since June, up to 950,000 players, and thanks to the Great Blizzard Exodus, English speaking players have nearly doubled the population of Japanese speaking ones.
Considering how many of the WoW refugees are still in the free trial, Endwalker is gonna easily end up over 1m. My prediction is 1.1-1.2 million active players for the first few months.
No wonder XIV is getting its budget doubled for the next expansion and post-Endwalker content.
SE has certainly been the biggest beneficiary of Blizzard's blunders. I'm happy for them, they just announced a new Star Ocean, they have multiple Final Fantasies coming down the pipe, Blizzard's loss is our gain.