Square Enix have announced a Summer Sale for MMO Final Fantasy XIV; with Shadowbringers and the Complete Edition being 60% off.
While the sale was only announced for Japan at this time of writing, it is worth noting the sale also applies to North America and Europe. The 60% discount applies to the Shadowbringers expansion, the Shadowbringers Collector’s Edition, and the Complete Edition (featuring both Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions).
The sale will last until the August 18th in Japan, but the western Square Enix stores make no distinction of when their sales will end. Western PlayStation Stores note the sale will end August 19th [US: 1, 2, 3] [Europe: 1, 2, 3].
The western Final Fantasy XIV Twitter account did announce a sale of a different kind, for the game’s premium item shop. Along with the introduction of the Oracle’s Attire and Consider emote, there is also a sale on several items until August 13th.
The latter includes the Eureka emote and two items related to the recent Make it Rain Campaign and Gold Saucer. These are the Senor Sabotender emote (to dance like the Gold Saucer’s mascot), and the Authentic Senor Sabotender Trophy for your housing. There are also discounts on progress skippers; leveling a job to 70 or completing the first two expansions.
While it is surprising to see the sale of the game and expansion not advertised, one possible reason could be Square Enix being reluctant for another wave of players. Final Fantasy XIV has recently seen a surge in interest; being all attributed to one man. The game recently broke its Steam concurrent players record with over 47,000; after World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold tried the game.
His first two streams and subsequent VODs reached 2.7 million and 2.1 million views. The game briefly had to contend with the Western servers being full, and had to implement a waiting list for the Complete Edition.
MMO Population- utilizing API tools, Reddit, and other resources to calculate player and active player numbers- proposed that Final Fantasy XIV has an estimated 2.49 million active players. This would be 30,000 more than their estimation for World of Warcraft (assuming both figures are accurate).
Officially, Final Fantasy XIV reached over 22 million registered players worldwide in April 2021. This would also include players who registered for the game’s free trial. Nonetheless, this number must surely have increased since Asmongold took his first steps into Eorzea.
Square Enix recently launched the benchmark for the Endwalker expansion. This allows players to not only test how well the game will run on their PC, but also use the game’s character creator. The latter will provide players with a small taste of the upcoming Male Viera race.
The Make it Rain Campaign is also currently underway, granting more MGP from the Gold Saucer minigames. This is also sure to see an influx of players. This writer also experienced lag on a European World while in the Gold Saucer, and large numbers of players crowding around NPCs offering quests and services. This image here indicates only half the players that surrounded this limited time quest NPC at its peak.
Final Fantasy XIV is available to Windows PC, (via the SE Store, and Steam), PlayStation 4, and coming soon to PlayStation 5, and Xbox One. A free trial is available, including the base game and the first expansion with some limitations. In case you missed it, you can find our Shadowbringers expansion review here (we can’t recommend it enough!)
The next expansion; Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, launches November 23rd.
Image: Twitter
