![]() Their continued interest has a lot to do with what they find once they start playing the game. What’s really interesting, though, is that a lot of those WoW players have seemingly kept playing FF 14 even after Shadowlands 9.1’s update was finally released earlier this week. A lot of them have been looking for ways to kill time. While the wait for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ 9.1 update and the new content it includes hasn’t been especially long in the grand scheme of things, it has felt long for a dedicated group of WoW players who have been left with little to do in the game. To help understand that part of the story, you have to know a little more about what is happening in WoW at the moment. Of course, that still doesn’t help explain why Asmongold (and many other World of Warcraft streamers who recently started playing Final Fantasy 14) suddenly decided to give the game a shot. When you have a controversial streamer in a social-driven environment who is having a blast in front of tens of thousands of people who likely usually play WoW, you’ve got a scenario in which those same tens of thousands of people (and more) are actively encouraged to see what all the hype is about. More importantly, Asmongold was glowing in his praise for Final Fantasy 14. When he plays something new, thousands of people quite literally follow him, as evidenced by the number of new players who swarmed the streamer in-game during his first Final Fantasy 14 session. ![]() Not only is he a pretty controversial streamer (which is a quality that always attracts additional attention, for better or worse), but he’s a controversial streamer who primarily plays community-focused games. While streamers can obviously influence a game’s popularity, Asmongold’s influence on a game’s growth is especially interesting. ![]() The weekend that Final Fantasy 14 broke its concurrent player record is the same weekend that Twitch streamer Asmongold (the most popular World of Warcraft streamer on the platform) played Final Fantasy 14 for the first time to an audience of over 200,000 concurrent viewers. To really start to understand why so many MMO fans and WoW players have suddenly started playing FF 14 after all these years, you have to understand a little more about what is happening in the MMO/ WoW community at the moment. Of course, even the deepest sale isn’t going to inspire a record number of people to blindly buy a new game. The “Complete Edition” of the MMO was on sale at a 60% discount for much of the event, which is obviously the kind of deal that could encourage more people to take a chance on the game. This is obviously not the biggest factor in play, but it’s very much worth noting that Final Fantasy 14‘s recent record weekend on Steam happened in the middle of the Steam summer sale. The Success of Final Fantasy 14’s Recent Steam Sale To help understand how this seemingly impossible and apparently sudden shift in the genre power balance is happening, consider a few of the main reasons why Final Fantasy 14 is enjoying a popularity surge eight years after its reboot and how it may be coming at WoW‘s expense. ![]() Final Fantasy 14 is actively stealing former and current World of Warcraft players, and that trend could very well continue into the final months of 2021 and beyond. While you shouldn’t buy into the ridiculous idea that WoW is somehow dead and being replaced by Final Fantasy 14, there is certainly something happening here that goes well beyond a blip on the radar. You can call it an anomaly, but it’s more than that. That record-setting weekend comes on the heels of reports that suggest Final Fantasy 14 may have more active subscribers than the apparent king of the MMORPG genre, World of Warcraft. Over the 4th of July weekend, Final Fantasy 14 broke its concurrent players record on Steam.
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