The new Dawntrail expansion has significantly increased player interest in Final Fantasy XIV. Square Enix’s MMORPG hasn’t had this many people playing it simultaneously across all platforms in over 10 years.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida shared the news in a post on the game’s official website, saying that the MMORPG reached a “record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013.”
A Realm Reborn was a complete reboot of the game, replacing the original FFXIV and turning it into a project players know today. This marked the beginning of one of the most successful MMORPGs of all time, which recently surpassed 30 million registered users.
Record interest from players is due to the launch of Dawntrail, the fifth major expansion for Final Fantasy XIV. To illustrate the DLC’s success, it first entered the top 10 highest-grossing games on Steam shortly after pre-orders opened in April, also boosting sales of the base game. FFXIV also ranked 10th among all premium titles on the store for the week of June 25-July 2.
Another reason is that Final Fantasy XIV arrived on Xbox Series X|S on March 21. Prior to this, it was only available on PC and PlayStation, so launching on the new platform likely increased player count as well.
Yoshida didn’t disclose the number of concurrent users, so it is unclear how many people were playing it simultaneously on each platform. The only official data we have is Steam, where Final Fantasy XIV recently peaked at 92k CCU and approached its all-time high of 95.1k CCU achieved at the launch of the Endwalker expansion (via SteamDB).
Following the end of the four-day Early Access period (for those who pre-ordered the DLC) and Dawntrail’s worldwide release on July 2, the game’s metrics on the platform dropped slightly to just over 71.2k concurrent players yesterday.
Despite strong numbers, Dawntrail received mixed reception from players. The DLC currently has a 63% rating on Steam based on around 2,000 reviews. Many users criticized its story and writing, especially compared to previous expansions.