We have a Steam curator now. You should be following it. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44994899-RPGHQ/
Final Fantasy XIV
That's the most obvious case of releasing something unfinished that I've ever heard.
Recently had the itch to re-sub just to mess with glamours and play around in bard performance, but gonna hold off for now until the story gets compelling again... would be nice to wipe my memory and replay Shadowbringers and Endwalker, or try all the original classes out like they were before they overhauled them. I heard astrologian was a lot of fun when it first came out
The art direction looks fantabulous.
► Show Spoiler
He didn't come out on stage dressed in a job costume this time.
The Godless Realms Saga
We go to the Fourth
He won't say anymore about the expansion story today until after 7.5 comes out.
They are switching from dailies to weeklies. They want to get out of the current gameplay loop of people hopping on and speedrunning the fastest dungeons possible and then logging off. Sound similar to WoW's Great Vault setup where you get a reward every week for doing whatever you want.


If you get all of the tomestone points this week, you can then earn the tomestones you missed from last week. Somewhat similar to WoW with the crest system but not as generous since WoW lets you get all of the crests you have missed that season.
They are changing out your ilevel increases. Current issue is that you only get the best gear from raiding, so people who don't enjoy raiding stall out and don't have a motivation to keep playing anymore, and people who raid only actively play every other patch when new 8 man raids come out. He will talk more about this later (again sounds similar to WoW where you can get Great Vault items from doing delves, world content, etc).
They are introducing seasons for ilevel cycles. Seasons will span 2 patches.
They are hoping to get patches out faster than the current cadence of once every 5 months
They are changing how alt job ilevel works. Currently if you want to play multiple jobs, you have to gather lots of different gear sets for different jobs. Striking for samurai/viper, maiming for reaper/dragoon, etc.
New system makes it so that you will be able to reflect your highest job item level to other jobs (not sure if there is a cap on how many alt jobs can be raised up like this, or if this just means you only have to gear up one job period). Will not include substat boosts from materia, so if you want to minmax you will still have to get gear for that other job (not that there is any need to minmax in this game).


The Godless Realms Saga
We go to the Fourth
He won't say anymore about the expansion story today until after 7.5 comes out.
They are switching from dailies to weeklies. They want to get out of the current gameplay loop of people hopping on and speedrunning the fastest dungeons possible and then logging off. Sound similar to WoW's Great Vault setup where you get a reward every week for doing whatever you want.


If you get all of the tomestone points this week, you can then earn the tomestones you missed from last week. Somewhat similar to WoW with the crest system but not as generous since WoW lets you get all of the crests you have missed that season.
They are changing out your ilevel increases. Current issue is that you only get the best gear from raiding, so people who don't enjoy raiding stall out and don't have a motivation to keep playing anymore, and people who raid only actively play every other patch when new 8 man raids come out. He will talk more about this later (again sounds similar to WoW where you can get Great Vault items from doing delves, world content, etc).
They are introducing seasons for ilevel cycles. Seasons will span 2 patches.
They are hoping to get patches out faster than the current cadence of once every 5 months
They are changing how alt job ilevel works. Currently if you want to play multiple jobs, you have to gather lots of different gear sets for different jobs. Striking for samurai/viper, maiming for reaper/dragoon, etc.
New system makes it so that you will be able to reflect your highest job item level to other jobs (not sure if there is a cap on how many alt jobs can be raised up like this, or if this just means you only have to gear up one job period). Will not include substat boosts from materia, so if you want to minmax you will still have to get gear for that other job (not that there is any need to minmax in this game).


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they'd get more players by just modernizing the FF11 control scheme.
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Character action skins
You will be able to obtain new animations that replace certain abilities.

Color picker. They showed off a green hyur, so it doesn't seem like you will be restricted to lore appropriate customizations.


You can turn off assets such as pauldrons, belts, sashes, scarves, sleeves, etc.


They want to improve the experience of being in the open world zones. More events and content in them. They don't want people to only sit in town/their house and queue for instances.
They want to improve the questing experience. They have been avoiding quest guidance that other games have. New QoL features for questing. More details to come in Berlin.
They will add a third difficulty level in between normal and savage for 8 man raids. 85% clear rate for normal difficulty. Only 20% max clear savage. They want to close the completion gap. They want more players to experience these raids and improve their gear.
"Adjusting progression routes for 24 man raids" more details to come.
New types of battle content to come (will this be a one off that is then promptly abandoned like 24 man chaotic raids?). More details to come.
They understand that 24 man raids can be quite the time sink. They are exploring ways to change up raid progression so as to alleviate the time commitment. They are not shortening the length of the raids. (Being able to teleport to specific bosses like in WoW?). More details to come.
No more queuing and party finder being limited to data centers and having to commute to the DC where raiders congregate in your region. Now you can just queue or open PF from whichever server and DC you are on and will be able to be matched with anyone in your region. Coming in 7.5.

You will be able to obtain new animations that replace certain abilities.

Color picker. They showed off a green hyur, so it doesn't seem like you will be restricted to lore appropriate customizations.


You can turn off assets such as pauldrons, belts, sashes, scarves, sleeves, etc.


They want to improve the experience of being in the open world zones. More events and content in them. They don't want people to only sit in town/their house and queue for instances.
They want to improve the questing experience. They have been avoiding quest guidance that other games have. New QoL features for questing. More details to come in Berlin.
They will add a third difficulty level in between normal and savage for 8 man raids. 85% clear rate for normal difficulty. Only 20% max clear savage. They want to close the completion gap. They want more players to experience these raids and improve their gear.
"Adjusting progression routes for 24 man raids" more details to come.
New types of battle content to come (will this be a one off that is then promptly abandoned like 24 man chaotic raids?). More details to come.
They understand that 24 man raids can be quite the time sink. They are exploring ways to change up raid progression so as to alleviate the time commitment. They are not shortening the length of the raids. (Being able to teleport to specific bosses like in WoW?). More details to come.
No more queuing and party finder being limited to data centers and having to commute to the DC where raiders congregate in your region. Now you can just queue or open PF from whichever server and DC you are on and will be able to be matched with anyone in your region. Coming in 7.5.

2 new jobs in 8.0
New tank job
New physical ranged DPS
Yoshi-P takes off his jacket, and Koji Fox points to Rhitahtyn on it wielding gunshields.

New FF14 original jobs as opposed to legacy FF franchise jobs
First job will be unveiled in Berlin
Too early in development, they don't have any videos of the jobs to show off.
Two modes to play your jobs: Reborn mode and Evolved mode.
Currently, we have 21 combat jobs, and 1 limited job. 22 total jobs that you can do combat with.
Reborn and evolved mode will only be available for the 21 regular jobs, so the limited jobs won't be a part of it.

Reborn mode preserves how the jobs currently play, rotations, abilities, etc. They will continue to update the jobs in 8.0.

Evolved mode: all new action rotations different from the reborn ones. There will be fewer abilities/keybinds required. You won't need 3 hotbars anymore. It is not an easy mode.

Reborn Dragoon and Evolver Dragoon will have some similarities, but also their own unique abilities and rotations. So there will be two kinds of Dragoons in the game.

You can toggle between modes any time outside of combat.
All content beatable as either mode. There are trying to balance Reborn and Evolved closely, but Evolved will probably be *slightly* stronger. Depending on the boss, there might be some modes that are better.
New jobs from 8.0 onward will only have evolved mode, since obviously there is nothing to preserve.
More details at a panel later today
New tank job
New physical ranged DPS
Yoshi-P takes off his jacket, and Koji Fox points to Rhitahtyn on it wielding gunshields.

New FF14 original jobs as opposed to legacy FF franchise jobs
First job will be unveiled in Berlin
Too early in development, they don't have any videos of the jobs to show off.
Two modes to play your jobs: Reborn mode and Evolved mode.
Currently, we have 21 combat jobs, and 1 limited job. 22 total jobs that you can do combat with.
Reborn and evolved mode will only be available for the 21 regular jobs, so the limited jobs won't be a part of it.

Reborn mode preserves how the jobs currently play, rotations, abilities, etc. They will continue to update the jobs in 8.0.

Evolved mode: all new action rotations different from the reborn ones. There will be fewer abilities/keybinds required. You won't need 3 hotbars anymore. It is not an easy mode.

Reborn Dragoon and Evolver Dragoon will have some similarities, but also their own unique abilities and rotations. So there will be two kinds of Dragoons in the game.

You can toggle between modes any time outside of combat.
All content beatable as either mode. There are trying to balance Reborn and Evolved closely, but Evolved will probably be *slightly* stronger. Depending on the boss, there might be some modes that are better.
New jobs from 8.0 onward will only have evolved mode, since obviously there is nothing to preserve.
More details at a panel later today
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Finarfin
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I guess I'll be playing FFXIV again. Hopefully they'll release a "Skip Dawntrail" token so I can skip that ****.
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Looks ********
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After the level cap increase to 100 in Dawntrail, there was talk internally about doing something different, but they said nah just go to 110.
They are going to update hunt
New designs




They will unveil the new 8 man raid series in Berlin after 7.5 releases.
7.5 ultimate raid will be revealed later.
They know that players want to do dungeons with a (player) friend and some NPC party members. They are investigating if that is possible. They might have more to say about that in Berlin.
They looking to evolve alliance raids.
24 man raid series is Evangelion for Eva 30th anniversary (Eva also got a Granblue Fantasy collab a few months ago)

They are going to update hunt
New designs




They will unveil the new 8 man raid series in Berlin after 7.5 releases.
7.5 ultimate raid will be revealed later.
They know that players want to do dungeons with a (player) friend and some NPC party members. They are investigating if that is possible. They might have more to say about that in Berlin.
They looking to evolve alliance raids.
24 man raid series is Evangelion for Eva 30th anniversary (Eva also got a Granblue Fantasy collab a few months ago)

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What if they just did something orthogonal to levels or broke levels down or something idkVal the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 18:54After the level cap increase to 100 in Dawntrail, there was talk internally about doing something different, but they said nah just go to 110.
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I always meant to play this game back when I was doing my FF series playthrough. Heard it was up there with some of the best stories in the franchise, but I never bothered because it's an mmo. Is it worth playing solo up to Endwalker for a complete story? I know there's a mode to do dungeons and raids with the main cast which sounds pretty cool.
@Val the Moofia Boss You play both this and WoW, right? Do you like XIV more? I remember there was a massive exodus from WoW to XIV a number of years ago because the gameplay loop was identical and, of course, no one liked the direction WoW was headed.
@Val the Moofia Boss You play both this and WoW, right? Do you like XIV more? I remember there was a massive exodus from WoW to XIV a number of years ago because the gameplay loop was identical and, of course, no one liked the direction WoW was headed.
I hate them.
FF14 is approaching the data limit of PlayStation 4 capacity. They have cooperated with Sony engineers to try to limit break and keep FF14 available on PS4, but it will soon no longer be possible. They think they will be okay up until 8.3. If you are still on PlayStation 4, you have two years to save up for a PS5. (Genshin Impact recently terminated PS4 support).
New ultimate raid


They got Kefka's original designer, Tetsuya Nomura, to help.
Free trial now includes Shadowbringers as of 7.5 next week

Evercold teaser cinematic uploaded.
New ultimate raid


They got Kefka's original designer, Tetsuya Nomura, to help.
Free trial now includes Shadowbringers as of 7.5 next week

Evercold teaser cinematic uploaded.
Yes, I play both WoW and FF14, though I have been playing WoW more over the last few years. It is difficult to compare the two because the main selling point of FF14 is the VN/JRPG that you go through once, not the endgame MMO part that you do regularlyBhaalspawn Jr wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 19:07I always meant to play this game back when I was doing my FF series playthrough. Heard it was up there with some of the best stories in the franchise, but I never bothered because it's an mmo. Is it worth playing solo up to Endwalker for a complete story? I know there's a mode to do dungeons and raids with the main cast which sounds pretty cool.
@Val the Moofia Boss You play both this and WoW, right? Do you like XIV more? I remember there was a massive exodus from WoW to XIV a number of years ago because the gameplay loop was identical and, of course, no one liked the direction WoW was headed.
Okay, so the thing is that FF14 is extremely story heavy like the Trails series. It is a 500+ hour long visual novel/JRPG, half of which is cutscenes or talking to NPCs and reading dialogue boxes. Of the other half of the playtime, about half of that - 25% of the total playtime - is spent running to the next cutscene or NPC to talk to, or running into a purple circle to spawn quest mobs which you burst down in 5 seconds before going back to the NPC. So less than 25% of the total runtime of the story is actual gameplay stuff like queuing to do a dungeon or a boss fight.
The actual FF14 combat gameplay - as in your rotation, your abilities, moving your character around, encounter mechanics, difficulty, etc - is generally nowhere near as engaging as in WoW. Over the years, the devs have been flatenning the depth. There used to be crowd controlling problem mobs during dangerous dungeon pulls like in Stone Vigil or Aurum Vale. Now crowd control abilities are gone, dungeon trash packs are not threatening anymore, etc. There used to be non linear dungeons, WoW-esque encounters like Steps of Faith where you have to stop a humongous dragon from crossing a bridge and reaching a city, etc. The nonlinear dungeons were revamped into corridors, Steps of Faith revamped into a one off story instance, etc. There used to be solo instances as a part of the main story or job storylines that were mildly challenging and tense, like the level 60 Red Mage fight or In From the Cold, but those were nerfed into the ground. So there has been a lot of dumbing down. There is no talent tree or class customization for regular gameplay. Dawntrail dungeons have more engaging boss fights than usual, but that is 500+ hours deep into the story.
Boss design is a mixed bag. The boss fights look spectacular with the memorable songs, the cutscene phase transitions, the crazy stuff happening in the background, spell VFX, etc. However, the actual gameplay of the boss fights does not leave room for creativity or perseverance like in WoW. You can't like death grip adds, pop divine shield to survive a hard hitting mechanic, place down demonic gateways for people to get out of danger fast, etc. In FF14, generally if you get hit, you die, and when savage raiding if one person dies it is generally a wipe because it causes a chain reaction of failed mechanics. Raiding is really memorizing the timeline and the safespots and being at the safespot on time, and rehearsing it over and over until you get the one run in which everybody was at their spots for the whole fight.
The story is overall good. There are ups and downs depending on the arc and the writer. There are several moments that had me on the edge of my seat in suspense, or made me teary eyed due to the broken friendships and reconciliations, or very mad at what had just happened. I most enjoyed the Ul'dah subplot of the ARR patch storyline, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers 5.0 through 5.3, as those had the most tension and investment for me. I also thought that Heavensward was neat (albeit grossly overrated). ARR 2.0 was hastily thrown together in the last 6 months of development, so it is hard to rate. The Endwalker and Dawntrail stories are... decent. Main issue is that they are very, very long but the pacing is a slog, where you can go many hours in which nothing engaging happens. Dawntrail suffers from a lack of tension in that in early on you stop believing anything bad (that you care about) will happen.





The story up through the end of Stormblood is similar to Trails in that it is about a geopolitical conflict in a grounded world where realities such as blood hatreds or economic forces cannot be handwaved away. And then, like with Trails, that premise gets thrown out half way through and the story becomes a romp where everything gets handwaved away by holding hands and togetherness. The story also becomes a simplistic light vs dark Kingdom Hearts story. This caused a lot of discontent for the fans who were waiting for the world war that was being built up. So now you know and won't be (too) disappointed.
Other major writing issue is that the second half of the story starting with ShB becomes very existentialist. But it's being written by secular Japanese who do not believe in God or heaven or what is Right and Wrong. So we get insane conclusions and messaging. If you have consumed enough anime/manga/JRPGs then you know what I am talking about. (I go into more depth here but it has full spoilers). There is also a globalist agenda that seeps in where every country that does not open up its borders and join the united states of Alphinaud is automatically vilified and must be infiltrated and overthrown and replaced by our Nice People™ puppets. FF14 was much more successful at propagandizing its messaging to the masses due to the swelling music, the british voice acting, etc. It is not offputting enough to make me drop the game but beware that it is there.
Other point is the main party. For the first half of the story up thorugh Stormblood, you are alternating between the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and a party of locals from the current kingdom you are in. I found the local party members to be more interesting. Estinien, Hien, Gosetsu, etc, than the Scions. Starting with Shadowbringers, you stop alternating with the locals and it become Scions only. The Scions are all slim, beautiful, affable, eloquent, magical scholars from the same academic island country of Sharlayan. It's just a little samey, and they become a little bit of a hivemind where you all know what they are going to do. They are going to be diplomatic, give technobabble about a magick solution, etc. It also gets old seeing them try to plead or reason with a villain over and over again. Look, we all know nobody is going to change their mind. Let's just be honest and draw our swords and get on with it. Fortunately Estinien gets added to the Scions later on and is a man's man who lunges at the bad guys the first chance he gets, but he's just one guy and it's not enough.
English dub starts off as lackluster. For the first expansion Heavensward, Square changed voice studios to London and recasted almost everybody as British TV and theater actors, and they are much better. The post HW dub is one of the better JRPG and anime dubs, up there with Xenoblade 1 and Trails of Cold Steel 1&2, though not immaculate like FF12's.
It definitely has the most amount of best story moments of any FF franchise game. But it's diluted across 500 hours. FF9 and FF10 have nowhere near as much good story hours, but their total runtime is only 30 hours and a much higher proportion of it is good (FF9 is great nonstop for the first 2 discs and first few hours of disc 3, out of 4 discs total). So if you have limited time then those games are better to go through. But if you have enough time over the months/years then going through FF14 will be satisfying too, just like with Trails.
Soundtrack is grossly overrated but is still very good. I have bought and reviewed all of the Blu-ray OSTs. There is a wide variety of genres and instruments. Real instruments, synths, orchestras, jazz, rock, metal, pop songs, etc. The tracks are melodic. My main nitpick is that starting with Heavensward, most of the night tracks is just Keiko Osaki doing a grand piano arrange, which becomes repetitive. Lead composer Soken creates a melody and then has his other composers reuse that melody for a dozen songs, but the melody he makes isn't sophisticated enough and the other composers don't change it enough, so it can become repetitive to listen to for how often you hear it.
You will have a lot of fun going through the story. Main problem is that once you are full caught up, you are running out of things to meaningfully do. You can progress through the optional endgame grind zones of Eureka and Bozja, maybe do the roguelike tower runs. Level some alt jobs. Do the gold saucer minigame casino. Etc. But then you'll be pretty much done, and the only thing left to do is to twiddle your thumbs until the next story chapter comes out. That is where I have been at for the last few years. I am subbed to keep my house (you lose it if you don't walk into it at least once every 45 days), but I only really login to check out the new story. The last time I really played was when the 24 man Chaotic raid came out, and then the Occult's Crescent endgame grind zone.
WoW is much more fun to actually play. Combat feels a lot better (character customization, sense of progression, netcode and responsive controls, depth of combat like crowd controls/death grips, elaborate boss fights like mounting up to fly, etc). Climbing M+ is a little satisfying. Dragonriding. Etc. Though WoW also faces similar longevity issues that I don't feel really motivated to play WoW year round, only for a month or two when a new major patch comes out, and then I am unsubbed. WoW also has a wider variety of races and more granular transmog (chestpiece, belts, and pauldrons are separate, whereas in FF14 there are all in one piece). WoW's soundtrack hitrate is pretty poor compared to FF14, though.
Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss on April 24th, 2026, 20:22, edited 3 times in total.
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Finarfin
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@Val the Moofia Boss when do you expect Square to release a dawntrail skip?
Steam code: 10514930
My Reviews:
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When the next expansion launches.Finarfin wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:19@Val the Moofia Boss when do you expect Square to release a dawntrail skip?
Why would you want to skip? Dawntrail's writing quality writing is same the game has been since Endwalker. It just doesn't have the benefit of being a story that people were already invested in like the Ascians, Garlemald, etc. The main issue with Dawntrail is the questing experience, where you can spend many hours running around Southern Tural with nothing interesting happening. This has always been an issue with later FF14 as the game has gone on. I don't see that radically changes with the next expansion.
@Bhaalspawn Jr I am not sure if I wrote that above post very well. I don't think I am a great salesman. I have this issue with WoW and Trails where I quite love them, but most of my writing is mainly diagnosing stuff, and it seems people walk away thinking how bad those games are and being baffled why I like them. I am just of the opinion that people should go in knowing what they are getting into/have tempered expectations, as they will enjoy it more. I have found that I enjoy stuff more that way, so I can go in knowing not to get hyped for something that won't have a satisfying delivery, and instead look for other things about the product to enjoy.
I quite like FF14 and recommend it.
I quite like FF14 and recommend it.
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Problem is the annoying focus on Wuk'Lamat. It was one of the reasons that I quit (and being permanently banned from the steam community hub for saying that the eng voice actor is a dude)Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:36When the next expansion launches.Finarfin wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:19@Val the Moofia Boss when do you expect Square to release a dawntrail skip?
Why would you want to skip? Dawntrail's writing quality writing is same the game has been since Endwalker. It just doesn't have the benefit of being a story that people were already invested in like the Ascians, Garlemald, etc. The main issue with Dawntrail is the questing experience, where you can spend many hours running around Southern Tural with nothing interesting happening. This has always been an issue with later FF14 as the game has gone on. I don't see that radically changes with the next expansion.
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Some thoughts on Evercold:
The architecture looks very neat. However, some of the screenshots also remind me a lot of Norvrandt, and the plot outline of a world being drowned in one element and you going there to save them from it feels like a retread. Execution might be different. We'll see.
With the constraints of the setting as established prior (the world was split into 14 parallel dimensions, the rest of the universe is dead, the one spaceship we have is delicate and expensive which means taking a lot of characters to go romp around the galaxy is a tall ask), the obvious thing to do is to go look at other shards. I thought that Alexandria and interdimensional fusion in Dawntrail was neat, the idea that our developed world is not towering above the rest of them like Norvrandt but that there could be other powerful advanced civilizations out there doing stuff of their own will and the power to execute it. Maybe two powers could meet each other and get into a cold war for supremacy and a interplanetary/interdimensional war break out.
Both cities look very interesting to me (the art noveau-esque grandiose city, and then the cliff side street canyon city). I quite liked Bastok in FF11 and thought it was unique, though I am guessing the cliffside city here will be relegated to just a town in a zone you will hardly visit.
I am worried that the viking/norse motifs will be accompanied by stereotypical norse elements and names. Viking longhouse serpent heads? Apocalyptic world eating serpent Jormungandr? Yggdrassil world trees? That stuff has been severely overexposed to me.
In the cinematics, they seem to very fiercely want to portray the WoL as only being melee jobs and not repeating them, even if it means having him don an old expansion job like Reaper. Oddly, this expansion will include a new melee job as a tank, but they didn't make the WoL into that, so perhaps one of the other main party members in this expac will be a gunshielder. At this point there are only two more melee jobs left: Ninja and Gunbreaker (already covered by Thancred). Unless Thancred switches off from Gunbreaker in the future, then perhaps we will eventually see the WoL as a ninja in a cinematic?
By the time Evercold comes out by the end of January 2027, it will have been 2.6 years since the launch of Dawntrail. Seems like the days of expansions coming out every 2 years are over.
Switching from dailies to the weekly great-vault esque gameplay where you don't have to login every day and can instead do what you want each week to progress sounds good on paper.
Character action skins sound good on paper. For a long time, the WoW community had been clamoring for class skins as animation/ability replacers to differentiate characters from each other like Sunwalkers, Sha wielders, etc. I guess here it will be up to how much Square follows through and continues to add more over time.
Not fond of green humans being possible, but the game already opened the floodgates long ago so now we have people standing around in limsa wearing modern clothing.
Evolved mode will probably be more enjoyable to play.
I am not fond of the explicit crossover 24 man raids. I want to explore more new and original FF14 stuff than see memberberries. I quite preferred how Bozja was original compared to the FF12/FFT raids (though they were well done). Fortunately the rumored FF7 themed expansion did not come to pass.
The architecture looks very neat. However, some of the screenshots also remind me a lot of Norvrandt, and the plot outline of a world being drowned in one element and you going there to save them from it feels like a retread. Execution might be different. We'll see.
With the constraints of the setting as established prior (the world was split into 14 parallel dimensions, the rest of the universe is dead, the one spaceship we have is delicate and expensive which means taking a lot of characters to go romp around the galaxy is a tall ask), the obvious thing to do is to go look at other shards. I thought that Alexandria and interdimensional fusion in Dawntrail was neat, the idea that our developed world is not towering above the rest of them like Norvrandt but that there could be other powerful advanced civilizations out there doing stuff of their own will and the power to execute it. Maybe two powers could meet each other and get into a cold war for supremacy and a interplanetary/interdimensional war break out.
Both cities look very interesting to me (the art noveau-esque grandiose city, and then the cliff side street canyon city). I quite liked Bastok in FF11 and thought it was unique, though I am guessing the cliffside city here will be relegated to just a town in a zone you will hardly visit.
I am worried that the viking/norse motifs will be accompanied by stereotypical norse elements and names. Viking longhouse serpent heads? Apocalyptic world eating serpent Jormungandr? Yggdrassil world trees? That stuff has been severely overexposed to me.
In the cinematics, they seem to very fiercely want to portray the WoL as only being melee jobs and not repeating them, even if it means having him don an old expansion job like Reaper. Oddly, this expansion will include a new melee job as a tank, but they didn't make the WoL into that, so perhaps one of the other main party members in this expac will be a gunshielder. At this point there are only two more melee jobs left: Ninja and Gunbreaker (already covered by Thancred). Unless Thancred switches off from Gunbreaker in the future, then perhaps we will eventually see the WoL as a ninja in a cinematic?
By the time Evercold comes out by the end of January 2027, it will have been 2.6 years since the launch of Dawntrail. Seems like the days of expansions coming out every 2 years are over.
Switching from dailies to the weekly great-vault esque gameplay where you don't have to login every day and can instead do what you want each week to progress sounds good on paper.
Character action skins sound good on paper. For a long time, the WoW community had been clamoring for class skins as animation/ability replacers to differentiate characters from each other like Sunwalkers, Sha wielders, etc. I guess here it will be up to how much Square follows through and continues to add more over time.
Not fond of green humans being possible, but the game already opened the floodgates long ago so now we have people standing around in limsa wearing modern clothing.
Evolved mode will probably be more enjoyable to play.
I am not fond of the explicit crossover 24 man raids. I want to explore more new and original FF14 stuff than see memberberries. I quite preferred how Bozja was original compared to the FF12/FFT raids (though they were well done). Fortunately the rumored FF7 themed expansion did not come to pass.
Wuk Lamat brought down the experience but not fatally so IMO. She is only very prominent in the 7.0 story. In the patches she takes a step back, and then quickly exits the story altogether at the start of 7.4.Finarfin wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:51Problem is the annoying focus on Wuk'Lamat. It was one of the reasons that I quit (and being permanently banned from the steam community hub for saying that the eng voice actor is a dude)Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:36When the next expansion launches.Finarfin wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:19@Val the Moofia Boss when do you expect Square to release a dawntrail skip?
Why would you want to skip? Dawntrail's writing quality writing is same the game has been since Endwalker. It just doesn't have the benefit of being a story that people were already invested in like the Ascians, Garlemald, etc. The main issue with Dawntrail is the questing experience, where you can spend many hours running around Southern Tural with nothing interesting happening. This has always been an issue with later FF14 as the game has gone on. I don't see that radically changes with the next expansion.
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Finarfin
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That info actually makes me consider playing again. But first I want to finish Season Zero of ESO.
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Nah, the post was pretty informative. Told me all I needed to know. Thanks, man. Honestly though, the 500+ hour story part is kind of off putting. I would have gone all in maybe 5 or so years ago, but older me is intimidated by this lol.Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:43@Bhaalspawn Jr I am not sure if I wrote that above post very well. I don't think I am a great salesman. I have this issue with WoW and Trails where I quite love them, but most of my writing is mainly diagnosing stuff, and it seems people walk away thinking how bad those games are and being baffled why I like them. I am just of the opinion that people should go in knowing what they are getting into/have tempered expectations, as they will enjoy it more. I have found that I enjoy stuff more that way, so I can go in knowing not to get hyped for something that won't have a satisfying delivery, and instead look for other things about the product to enjoy.
I quite like FF14 and recommend it.
EDIT:
Btw, I can't see any of the images you attached. Not even with a VPN cause the site doesn't let me in with it.
Last edited by Bhaalspawn Jr on April 24th, 2026, 21:40, edited 1 time in total.
I hate them.
Well you don't have to go through all 500 hours at once. You can treat the base X.0 launches as box JRPG stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and pick up and complete them when you feel like it. The patch chapters and the major side storylines (trial storyline, 8 man raid, and 24 man raid) you can pick up and do in a day or over a weekend whenever you feel like them, like an anime movie or series of episodes.Bhaalspawn Jr wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 21:38Nah, the post was pretty informative. Told me all I needed to know. Thanks, man. Honestly though, the 500+ hour story part is kind of off putting. I would have gone all in maybe 5 or so years ago, but older me is intimidated by this lol.Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:43@Bhaalspawn Jr I am not sure if I wrote that above post very well. I don't think I am a great salesman. I have this issue with WoW and Trails where I quite love them, but most of my writing is mainly diagnosing stuff, and it seems people walk away thinking how bad those games are and being baffled why I like them. I am just of the opinion that people should go in knowing what they are getting into/have tempered expectations, as they will enjoy it more. I have found that I enjoy stuff more that way, so I can go in knowing not to get hyped for something that won't have a satisfying delivery, and instead look for other things about the product to enjoy.
I quite like FF14 and recommend it.
Hrm. Might be because imgur is banned in the UK now?Btw, I can't see any of the images you attached. Not even with a VPN cause the site doesn't let me in with it.
Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss on April 24th, 2026, 21:45, edited 1 time in total.
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@Val the Moofia Boss feel free to use the vault for screenshots
CuriousBhaalspawn Jr wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 21:38Not even with a VPN cause the site doesn't let me in with it.
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I have uploaded nearly 24k screenshots and gifs to imgur. If I started uploading every image and gif to the vault from now on, it would quickly begin filling up Rusty's hard drive (buy HQ platinum!). I also post a lot of these screenshots on other forums when participating in threads there, and it's just easier to upload to one platform once and copypaste the link once rather than having to upload separately to one host and paste that link for that site, and then separately for another host and site, etc. It makes more sense to upload to the vault for one offs like HQ reviews.rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 21:49@Val the Moofia Boss feel free to use the vault for screenshots

I like to stick to one game till I finish it though, but I could see myself going through it like seasons of an anime/TV show. We'll see. I do love the franchise and heard such good things about Heavensward and ShadowbringersVal the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 21:44Well you don't have to go through all 500 hours at once. You can treat the base X.0 launches as box JRPG stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and pick up and complete them when you feel like it. The patch chapters and the major side storylines (trial storyline, 8 man raid, and 24 man raid) you can pick up and do in a day or over a weekend whenever you feel like them, like an anime movie or series of episodes.Bhaalspawn Jr wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 21:38Nah, the post was pretty informative. Told me all I needed to know. Thanks, man. Honestly though, the 500+ hour story part is kind of off putting. I would have gone all in maybe 5 or so years ago, but older me is intimidated by this lol.Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ April 24th, 2026, 20:43@Bhaalspawn Jr I am not sure if I wrote that above post very well. I don't think I am a great salesman. I have this issue with WoW and Trails where I quite love them, but most of my writing is mainly diagnosing stuff, and it seems people walk away thinking how bad those games are and being baffled why I like them. I am just of the opinion that people should go in knowing what they are getting into/have tempered expectations, as they will enjoy it more. I have found that I enjoy stuff more that way, so I can go in knowing not to get hyped for something that won't have a satisfying delivery, and instead look for other things about the product to enjoy.
I quite like FF14 and recommend it.
Hrm. Might be because imgur is banned in the UK now?Btw, I can't see any of the images you attached. Not even with a VPN cause the site doesn't let me in with it.
Yeah, I can't see anything from imgur without a VPN. Normally I'd use the built-in one in the Opera browser to see stuff I normally couldn't (like your images), but I can't get on this site that way right now for whatever reason.
I hate them.
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@Bhaalspawn Jr what VPN do you use? I think we banned a few free VPNs to prevent abuse iirc
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