On July 2, the newest expansion to the popular game, Final Fantasy XIV Online, was released. Titled Dawntrail, it witnessed the almost decade-old game receive a massive graphical overhaul, although the infamous low poly grapes remained untouched, much to fans' pleasant surprise.
What did come as a shock to many online users was just how much this new DLC would affect the game's dynamics on Twitch. With a lot of renewed interest in the legendary open-world, strategy title, it has managed to break into the top ten leaderboard for watch time on the purple platform and the top 15 by peak viewership over the past week.
While Final Fantasy XIV Online has recorded 5.71M Hours Watched between June 28 and July 4, it has notched 109.4K Peak Viewers, reflecting rises of 460% and 666%, respectively. In fact, if we count the audience reach for just the three days between July 2 and 4, these rankings get even better.
This means that the game has done much better than the more prominent titles like Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, and EA Sports FC 24 by watch time over the last week. More impressively, its PV figures have outperformed names like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty: Warzone, and another new game that has enjoyed its time in the Twitch spotlight, Chained Together.
What has helped the game's new expansion gain so much traction is the new areas, quests, quality-of-life improvement, and addition of the Viper and Pictomancer jobs. It also signals a new story for a game that has seen a lot, including a great ending to a 10-year-old saga in its previous expansion, Endwalker, which was widely cheered when it came out almost three years back.
However, the DLC has had some downsides, which has seen it get "mixed" reviews on Steam. These issues, which include a major Xbox bug that stops gameplay completely when moving between locations, even led to Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida apologizing to fans.
Moreover, most discussion hubs and forums online have seen loyal gamers and long-time followers chime in with their criticisms and what they feel can be bettered. Many have also questioned the game's story, using terms like 'underwhelming' and a 'disaster and a waste of potential' to describe it.
The positive spin to this is that fans feel the gameplay gets better after a dozen or so hours. Also, with a completely new story, players get a fresh start to a series that has been around for so long, meaning they have more options to explore on the map, including quests and areas.
Final Fantasy XIV Online has also managed to attract a host of content creators, who have played their part in boosting its viewership on live streaming services. The likes of ZeplaHQ, XenosysVex, and Hendy have emerged as some of its most-watched streamers over the last seven days, helping it climb up the Twitch charts.
Many of these online stars have seen their weekly PV and HW numbers shoot up thanks to playing this Square Enix offering. For a lot of them, these live streams have ended up becoming their most successful, either by watch time or popularity or both, showing just how much demand for good content on the game there is among internet audiences.
While English was the most watched language among viewers for the game over the past week, an interesting trend has emerged. Despite being known to be popular in Japan, the expansion's first few days did not see this fact reflected in the numbers, but over the last couple of days, Japanese audiences have shown a growing attraction to it, resulting in the language being second on the HW table since its release on July 2.
Lastly, compared to the five most-watched new releases this year, its watch time over the first three days of release was close to four of them — XDefiant, HELLDIVERS™ 2, Tekken 8, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Only the shockingly successful and highly lauded Palworld, also the most successful 2024 release by viewership figures, towers over the rest.
As one of the most renowned and beloved video game franchises of all time, Final Fantasy will always enjoy a steady stream of players and online viewers. However, it is not often that its games make a splash on platforms like Twitch, and fans will hope it stays this way for a long time to reflect its success and that of its newest DLC.
