Lucky Bancho, the player behind a popular Final Fantasy XIV unofficial census, has released a new set of character data ahead of patch 6.1, Newfound Adventure. On the heels of its biggest expansion yet, the early version 6.x numbers reflect a few interesting points, like y’all are still really into the bunn boys and active characters are at an all-time high.
The latest unofficial FFXIV census from Lucky Bancho’s report (via u/MKillerby), provides a generalized, big picture look at trends as they shift post-Endwalker. Perhaps the least shocking conclusions are those points Square Enix has made since last year, FFXIV saw a surge in popularity with the reveal of Endwalker. Lucky Bancho’s report shows its biggest jump in active character data yet with 1.7 million total, up 350,000 from the 1.35 million characters recorded in January.
Remember, that’s “active characters,” so not active players or even an exact number on all characters. Lucky Bancho uses data provided via FFXIV’s Lodestone, some of which is private and doesn’t always draw meaningful conclusions. To classify a character as active, they must be over level 60 and have changes in HP, level, exp, mounts, or minions since the last survey. The character could also be new since a previous report, but all of this still excludes data from free trial users.
Other interesting observations include what new Warriors of Light folks are conjuring up in the creator. In Japan, Viera became the most popular male race in just a few short months, and while those numbers aren’t enough to make them the most played at a global level—they’re still pretty damn close. Hyur and Miqo’te are still the first and second most popular choices, but Viera make up about 7.2% of male characters.
This is also the first census from Lucky Bancho since the Oceanian Data Center made its debut. Materia’s grand opening seems like it may have relieved some of the congestion to servers in Japan, which hosted the closest data centers in proximity to countries like New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia. Japan’s Elemental data center has long served as the unofficial home for foreign players, but the census suggests an active character population decline of just over 2,000 on its Tonberry world. Materia’s total active character count is close to 40,000, with Ravana seated as the most popular of the Oceanian servers by several thousand characters.
As for Savage content, Japan still outpaces the rest of us when it comes to the most players with a clear. The census uses active player data from characters with the normal Pandaemonium raid minion and Savage difficulty mount. Asura and Chocobo sport some of the highest clear rates among active players, with Demi-Phoinix mount ownership hovering around 22-23% on those servers.
Worldwide numbers show a much different picture, with those in possession of the most current Savage mount anywhere from 1-10%. Maybe we’re all stuck in bird boss hell—I still can’t see anything happening in the showdown with Phoinix and would rather fight the last boss of the tier and skip that orange arena. Or, it could just be all of our tanks are revolting.
At the end of the day, take FFXIV’s unofficial census with a grain of salt. Lucky Bancho aggregation here is brilliant as always, but like most Lodestone data, we can only work with character numbers that aren’t private and lack more helpful indicators unreported by SE.
