I didn’t expect it this year, but Squaresoft released the fifth detailed report (the second released to the american public) as they did a year ago.

The first thing jumping to the eye is that they removed completely the numbers from the charts. While the main focus of the report of the previous year was to flaunt the great success that the game was having, this year the approach is way more modest and quiet. As if the comeback campaign wasn’t enough of a demonstration, it’s rather obvious that the numbers of the game do not shine anymore as for the past year. Even FFXI is suffering the release of better games along with a “flat development” that isn’t really improving or addressing the problems of the game.

Another confirmation of this trend comes from the second page:

Based on data compiled at the end of March 2005, we conducted research on the main job levels of over 1,550,000 characters belonging to over 500,000 registered users.

To begin with, these 500.000 registered users aren’t specified as active. Secondly, from the last news we had in September I was estimating around 600k of active subscriptions or more. 550k confirmed for sure.

So it’s now fair to assume that the game is stalling and starting to see a slight decline.

To notice the number of level 1 characters between the total pool of 1.5M, rises from the 34% of the last year to 41% – Mules for the win!

And the dynamics of the power curve:
-3.93% in the 2-10 level range (38.94%)
-6.16% in the 11-20 level range (16.91%)
-1.06% in the 21-30 leve range (8.74%)
+1.33% in the 31-40 level range (6.02%)
+1.20% in the 41-50 level range (5.18%)
+1.86% in the 51-60 level range (7.47%)
+1.70% in the 61-70 level range (7.44%)
+5.33% in the 71-75 level range (9.30%)

Little kids are growing…

The parsed official commentary:

Excluding level 1 storage characters, characters up to level 20 comprise around 55% of the total population. Compared to last year, there has been a 1% increase in the number of level 30 characters, which can be attributed to the effect of level-restricted areas in the Chains of Promathia, and also to players attempting to quest for extra jobs. The number of characters of level 50 and above has increased dramatically to 24% from 15% last year, while characters of level 71 and above have increased by almost 5% to 9% this year.

The detailed power curve is also interesting to compare to the one of other games:

The second one is from World of Warcraft.