At the time you are reading this, there are at most 15 weeks before Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold should be releasing. I say this for good cause; while we do not have an exact release date yet, January 26th, 2027 is the last Tuesday when it could release and still be in January. Certainly it ispossible that the release date will be delayed and we’ll find out about it at the end of the month, but I feel like that is presently somewhat unlikely. Which leaves us with a different question: What, exactly, are we supposed todo for those 15 weeks?
To be clear, the answer may very well be “play other games.” I don’t think for one second that Naoki Yoshida was planning around some advance foreknowledge of other releases happening this year, but I can’t imagine he wasn’t happy to know that one big project is releasing at the start of November and thus well shy of the expansion release. But even with that in place, usually we get a drip-feed of things to keep our interest running. So let’s talk about those next 15 weeks and what we know will be coming as we move closer to the expansion launch.
We already know that All Saints’ Wake is on its way very soon, and following that we’ve got the usual Starlight event alongside Heavensturn. I don’t imagine any of these events will be terribly elaborate this year; the first among that batch already has its new rewards teased, which look wholly uninteresting to me, and I imagine the other events will be similarly small. The sort of thing you blow through in half an hour of play at most.
I do find it interesting, however, that the Mogtome event ends not on this coming Monday butnext Monday. That’s a little bit odd, to me. It seems to indicate that there is going to be a gap rather than having the next part launch right away; I could be proven wrong, but the gap is still appreciable in that regard. In fact, we don’t have much idea what patch 7.57 will actuallycontain despite it dropping for October 13th; the typing game for the Gold Saucer isn’t slated to be added until October 28th.
Yes, I am looking forward to that. I can’t speak for other people, but I like typing games. I’m sure you’re all shocked.
Last but not least, we know that the final fan festival of this cycle will take place at the end of the month. Obviously, we’ll get the official name of Crossbow Birder there, along with the last few pre-release details and so forth. If there’s a delay to be announced, expect it there. (I don’t really expect one, but if it happens, that’ll be the time.) We will almost certainly get a firm date. But that ultimately still leaves more or less all of November, most of December, and a potential chunk of January as a big gap in terms of content and things to keep players engaged.
So what am I expecting fits in there? Well, for one thing, we know therewill be a second part to the Moogle event, and I expect that to kick off in November. Why after such a gap? Well, I feel like if it was going to kick off immediately after the first part ended, there wouldn’t be nearly as much point inhaving a gap at all. This gives players some time to focus on other content for a bit between segments, as well as a reason to otherwise log back in during November.
I also fully expect that we’re going to get a rundown of new abilities and the like either in November or December. ForDawntrail, we got that full rundown in a broadly similar timeframe. My hope is that we’ll also get a similar writeup on the official site for guidance as well as a similar video. This will be substantiallyafter the fan festival, but before launch, so late November or early December makes perfect sense.
Somewhere in that broad area, expect to get a benchmark release. I expect this is going to also be pretty similar toDawntrail’s release, which wanted people to play around with the character creator; once again, we’re getting new character creator options, although it’s less of a graphical engine upgrade. None of this qualifies as new things to do within the game proper, but it also matches what we usually get in this region of pre-release stuff, where there’s as much of a set of changes to the ecosystem as anything.
Last but not least, November is probably going to be when the full regional matching rolls out to the rest of the game, barring something unusual, unexpected, and bad happening with the Japanese test. Again, I feel like this is deliberate. If something goes wrong, this is time to space that out until December without disrupting anything; if all goes according to plan, November is probably the target.
Are we going to get any additional major events that we don’t know about running toward the lead-up? I tend to doubt that, but I wouldn’t necessarily bestunned if we got something tying back into the upcoming release ofFinal Fantasy Resonance; that’s at the end of this month, so there’s space to announce a cross-promotion at the last fan festival. Of course, that cross-promotion might just be a couple new outfits on the Mog Station, so I wouldn’t exactly bank on something life-changing going in there. New outfits for a few extra bucks are nothing new.
Last, and deliberately least, I think the final fan festival will give us some ideas of the new visuals for job abilities, and I wouldn’t be stunned (although I would be a little surprised) if we get some sort of early release of the weekly activity page just so players can get used to it beforeEvercold hits properly in January. We’ll definitely get more previews out-of-game, but in-game? I think it’s just this side of plausible, although it’s unusual in the extreme. Still, this is the first time since the game’s relaunch that we’ve had such a significant overhaul to our reward structure.
It might seem like what I’m describing is a pretty sedate couple of months in-game, and by and large I think that’s more or less accurate. I think that if you haven’t gotten what you wanted from some of the event reruns, you’ll have stuff to do, but I also feel like the majority of what will be added is nothing that veterans haven’t already done outside of a typing game with new rewards. But at the same time… itis only 15 weeks, at most. That’s not all that long, when you get right down to it.
Feedback, like always, is welcome via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com or in the comments down below. Next week, I want to talk about something we haven’t really had a reason to talk about for ages, but I was recently reminded of insofar asFFXIV’s relaunch was made much better by the fact that it was, in fact, accompanied by several months of unavailability.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizingFinal Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
