>>529517875
I think it's in a decline, but all it'll take is a single good expansion to bring it back. I don't think we're in a longterm death spiral. I've seen those before, in other games, and this doesn't look quite like that. But the sense of community in this game? That is absolutely turbofucked atm. The last time I felt like the game had a welcoming community was when I played on the cloud test servers, pic related, and since nobody had their hangups from their main (this is hard to express, but basically there was no fear that anything someone did would "stick" to the avatar they'd grown attached to) everyone felt free to just do what they wanted and be who they wanted. And since everyone was forced onto two servers instead of several dozen, with no housing incentive at all due to the short duration, we had actual FCs popping up again and community efforts to get queues popping. People from all regions were here and making it work. The community consisted mostly of people who just enjoyed playing the game for its own sake, because anyone who cared about a reward left when they realized there weren't any. It felt fun, and good. Really good. It's probably the last time I've smiled and laughed a ton while playing this game.

Pic related: The final hour of Cloudtest server, where everyone lined up golden namazu mounts in a big circle in town. Due to how the cloud servers handled congestion, there were hundreds and hundreds of people squeezed into this small plaza before the instance finally started locking folks out.