I dont keep up with the community but why is now everyone saying that the game is dying? Did somwthing happened that just made everyone think the same?
1) There was anecdotal stuff like a massive exodus with housing districts being empty on popular servers, so unofficial doom and glooming.
2) There was a shareholder call where they explicitly stated that profits were down in their MMO division and specifically said that XIV was down YOY. There's also been quotes from people like Yoshi P and high level SE execs who are stating that they are 'aware' the game has problems. Or in other words, official doom and glooming.
3) There's been little things people are making mountains out of, like that 40% off graphic I posted a lil while back
4) Recent patches have been rife with some pretty fucking significant issues, some perceived and some real. The biggest one being the major content patch of Occult Crescent landing like a turd on a wedding cake -- loot tables were fucked so everyone got whatever they were looking for instantly, the raid content, Forked Tower, had an ass-backwards method of queuing up that made it so difficult that even the JP players, who typically take whatever UI silliness the devs cook up on the chin, were just as irate over it as NA players were, the remaining content is boring, dry, and too grindy.
5) Wuk Lamat's head remains attached to her body and not on a pike.
6) The most recent patch heavily implies that we're going back to Old Man Ascian(s) again which some people are taking as a sign they're creatively bankrupt.
I feel a lot of this is overblown, with the asterisk that if the next expansion is literally the exact same structure (6 zones, 2 of which are split in half and open up later, rigid MSQ, gameplay loop still being beholden to the 2 minute meta, [insert your own grievances here]) I'll be changing my tune quickly. There are some issues and Dawntrail was the drizzling shits, but based on some stuff that's been coming up, I'm optimistic that they're going to be able to somewhat fix things. It's just whether they're going to fix enough shit and continue to keep fixing things is the big question.