The story of Final Fantasy XIV is a truly fascinating one. Square Enix’s MMORPG was originally released in 2010 and largely panned by critics and players alike. In order to salvage the game, Naoki Yoshida proposed that the company completely rebuild the game from scratch while maintaining the original build of FFXIV, and writing the story such that the destruction of one world could lead seamlessly into the next one. In 2013, the realm was indeed reborn, and FFXIV has become one of the most popular MMOs in the market right now.
In a recent interview with Korean media outlet Inven, Yoshida gave us a teaser for what to expect from FFXIV going forward. It’s worth noting that the next Fan Fest has been set for early 2026, and we can almost certainly expect to at least see a teaser for the game’s next expansion. In addition to that, however, Yoshida also made a rather interesting statement.
“Final Fantasy XIV is already moving towards the next decade,” Yoshida states. “The Fan Festival has been planned and a fairly big announcement is being prepared. With the goal of evolving the game itself into a cutting-edge service with the determination to reinvent it for the second time, we are rethinking everything from scratch.”
Okay look. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up because Yoshida has certainly made grand statements in the past which amounted to nothing more than smaller quality-of-life updates. And it’s entirely possible that he could be talking about the story of FFXIV itself and taking it in an entirely different direction. During the interview, Yoshida also commented on the challenges of developing an MMO for new and existing players. While it’s always exciting for veteran players to log in and find something new to do, it would take forever for new players to ever catch up to them, which isn’t a good thing.
Maybe Yoshi-P isn’t planning on dropping the moon on Eorzea a second time. Maybe, instead, he’s just thinking of finally implementing a second starting point in the story that would allow players to immediately jump into the new expansion without having to play everything else that came before it. Story skip potions already exist for a price on the Mog store, but perhaps Yoshi-P might have something a little more drastic in mind. Either way, we’ll find out soon enough.
Final Fantasy XIV is now available on PC and PS5.
