One person on BG got it right...

Someone decided to troll-bait a thread (and probably got banned for it) about whether FFXI is dead...

Someone got it right on the head when they "fixed" another person's opinion to read:

"No, there are more RMT'd accounts now than ever before."

On top of that, there are more RMT accounts now than ever before.

How can I say this with such assurance? The last Mog Bonanza...

According to the wiki, using information posted from the results of the just-completed January 2010 Mog Bonanza, the total number of gil received was about 10 1/3 billion gil.

This means that just over 5.1 million marbles were selected.

Fully realizing that not every player played 10 marbles on every one of their characters, would this number, in any way, jibe with Square-Enix' claim that there 2.35 million characters in the game last May?

I THINK NOT!

If there are even 2 million characters in the game at all, over half of them are either absolutely dormant and/or RMT. They have startlingly few active characters, if this is any indication.

If every character had 10 marbles, that's about 510,000 active characters. Pump that number up a small amount if you wish for those who did not, but that's not promising for the future...