Patch 8.0 - How long is too long to wait?

After my disappointment for Dawntrail, they can take an extra year if it means the end product will be a huge hit. I'm in no rush.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

With rumors about the release date being discussed, how long is too long for all of you to wait for 8.0? Some people are saying it will be 2.5 years from 7.0 release and others are saying 3 years.

For me, if patch 7.5 lands in April of 2026 and then they wait until summer of 2027, that’s my red line. They must get 8.0 out on or before December of 2026 or there will be mass “retirements” in my opinion.

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There already is .none of my friend is playing currently .my own 6 month sub is expiring on 20 Jan and I won't be renewing it till next expansion comes .

Any delay above 2 years is a lazy part on development team side .I am not going to reward laziness with keeping my sub on .

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Originally Posted by Miohazuki

There already is .none of my friend is playing currently .my own 6 month sub is expiring on 20 Jan and I won't be renewing it till next expansion comes .

Any delay above 2 years is a lazy part on development team side .I am not going to reward laziness with keeping my sub on .

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I think a lot will take a break until 8.0 unless your doing savage or ultimate. The free login campaign will allow most people to catch up and then wait.

There are rumors that 7.5 MSQ will be something special, we will see but with no new OC or variant dungeons until summer of 2026, it’s going to be a long dead period from now till then.

Given what I think is probably going to happen (the eighth Calamity -- to provide for an MSQ reset), who knows?

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

With rumors about the release date being discussed, how long is too long for all of you to wait for 8.0? Some people are saying it will be 2.5 years from 7.0 release and others are saying 3 years.

For me, if patch 7.5 lands in April of 2026 and then they wait until summer of 2027, that’s my red line. They must get 8.0 out on or before December of 2026 or there will be mass “retirements” in my opinion.

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they've been hinting at something being released fast after tokyo fanfest
folks have guessed its 7.6 which would be unusual but stands to reason.
currently im unsure how they could finish the story in one patch. its all over the place

so i doubt its the expac. it would be rediculous. they must release the date if its an expac during the UK fanfest at least. so folks can book the time off work.

NGL though it already feels like 4yrs have passed since DT.

I really think the cards are beginning to stack up that we are looking at an Eighth Calamity.

Rumors of a "special" 7.5, something being released fast after Tokyo, the need to rework the MSQ possibly again...

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Originally Posted by TwiceDamned

I really think the cards are beginning to stack up that we are looking at an Eighth Calamity.

Rumors of a "special" 7.5, something being released fast after Tokyo, the need to rework the MSQ possibly again...

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i just don't see how they can. they might say 8.0 will the the final before the calamity.
but they took the servers offline for 3yrs prior to the ARR launch. it would be stupid to do so again. they make money on FFXIV they do not loose it so .. its silly to stop. they were not making money on it prior to ARR so it made sense to stop it.

to do it they would need to nuke it completely and reopen the new game in the normal schedule of an expac release.

I don't believe this Calamity will include a server takedown of more than a few days (unless they actually are considering letting it all play out with inferior server architecture and dealing with the "DDoS" (if it's this and not a DDoS outfit) by upgrading the server tech during a longer stopdown for 8.0).

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Originally Posted by lievaordiea

i just don't see how they can. they might say 8.0 will the the final before the calamity.
but they took the servers offline for 3yrs prior to the ARR launch. it would be stupid to do so again. they make money on FFXIV they do not loose it so .. its silly to stop. they were not making money on it prior to ARR so it made sense to stop it.

to do it they would need to nuke it completely and reopen the new game in the normal schedule of an expac release.

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And that's assuming most of us come back once the dust settles from another Calamity.

Personally I'm not keen on some big "reset" that undoes tons of progress and renders every piece of the story before it pointless (as ended up being the case with so much of 1.0's lore and world), or people's general obsession with seeing the Warrior of Light "lose everything" as if there would be anything worth fighting for at that point if the whole world gets destroyed and nigh-every NPC we know ends up dead or MIA while we get massively de-powered.

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Originally Posted by TwiceDamned

I don't believe this Calamity will include a server takedown of more than a few days (unless they actually are considering letting it all play out with inferior server architecture and dealing with the "DDoS" (if it's this and not a DDoS outfit) by upgrading the server tech during a longer stopdown for 8.0).

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It's unlikely that they're going to do a technical overhaul at this point. If we were a few more years in and they were circling the drain, maybe, but I think they're going to play some other cards first.

I like the idea of a calamity from a narrative standpoint, though. The entire story has grown so insanely stagnant that outside of a major shake-up, I don't see much changing in the game's long term prospects. The players are bored.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

It's unlikely that they're going to do a technical overhaul at this point. If we were a few more years in and they were circling the drain, maybe, but I think they're going to play some other cards first.

I like the idea of a calamity from a narrative standpoint, though. The entire story has grown so insanely stagnant that outside of a major shake-up, I don't see much changing in the game's long term prospects. The players are bored.

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They dedicated a lot of time to making 6.0 and the EW raid series the end of Amaurot's influence over the modern era, and then it was back to Amaurotine secrets by the end of 7.0 and an Ascian shortly after. Even if the nebulous bad thing they're setting up is more destructive than a Calamity, I'm doubtful that there will actually be a meaningful shakeup.

If they go with another Calamity route and call it the Eighth Umbral Calamity, 5.0 Crystal Exarch would want a word with YoshiP.

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Originally Posted by lievaordiea

currently im unsure how they could finish the story in one patch. its all over the place

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They're not? DT is basically wrapped up, 7.4-.55 are going to be leading into 8.0, the way X.4-.55 did for every xpac except EW.
Any perceived remaining story isn't tied to DT, just building off building blocks laid out previously.
2.4-.55 set up the Crystal Braves which led to WoL being on the run from Ul'Dah/greater Eorzea (and also later into their involvement leading into Stormblood)
3.4-.55 used Nidhogg's Eyes to ignite the conflict leading into the liberation of Ala Mhigo
4.4-.55 used the Exarch trying to pull the WoL to the First obviously led to Shadowbringers
5.4-.55 had Fandanial causing strife to lead into Endwalker.

2027
/10char

Honestly just waiting for info on this game takes to long

Based on the patch schedule, 7.5 should come around late April to early May, July probably for 7.55 and then 7.57 and 7.58 at some point later which will mostly just remove weekly limits for everything except tomestones. Then we enter probably least a year of content drought waiting for 8.0.

They're either going to rush it because Square-Enix keeps wasting their money on stupid shit so they need that money from selling the next expansion, or they're going to take extra time because of how badly 7.0 and 7.1 went.

There's no way that we'd be getting a year between .55 and 8.0, absolutely 0%. Closest I could see is either a 7.6 around the end/new year or 8.0 in that same time frame. At 19 weeks between major patches (which is about what we've gotten with DT at an average of 140 days), counting .55 as another 'major' patch, and allowing for about at most two months before release, I'd expect 8.0 no later than March.

They can't stick with a summer release without going back to the roughly 3.5 month patch cycle. Either they have to have something more significant to tide people over... or they have to let expansion release date will wander around some. Since we're starting a new story arc they can't assume the plot hook from 7.5 and .55 will be enough. It worked for EW because ShB had enough extenuating circumstances around it (covid related delays, and 6.0 release delay due to covering roughly the same amount of story as they would normally cover through the X.3 patch

We used to get an expansion every two years, following a fairly stable model with patches ranging from .1 to .5.

That structure represented the minimum amount of content needed between expansions to keep players from getting bored. During ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood, the developers also weren’t afraid to experiment. Sometimes it failed and had to be reworked—Diadem being the obvious example. Sometimes it worked very well, like Eureka, which was later refined and improved into Bozja.

What the developers are doing now—and what is already barely acceptable—is this:

Keeping the same overall structure, but with much longer delays between patches.

Avoiding innovation almost entirely in order to stay on the “safe side.”

Take Palace of the Dead as an example. When it first released, many players spent days or even weeks inside it. It was new content with a new concept. While there is still an audience for that type of content, Heaven-on-High and the later deep dungeons feel more like variations of the same formula. For many players, they no longer provide long-term engagement because the “newness” factor is gone.

Playing it safe ultimately causes players to get bored faster, because so much content feels like a remake of something that already exists.

Meanwhile, genuinely new additions—like Beastmaster—are being pushed all the way to the .5 patch, nearly two years after the launch of Dawntrail. I understand the idea of saving content to keep players engaged between the final patch and the next expansion. Historically, the .5 patch has always lasted the longest, often nearly twice as long as other patch cycles. But with Dawntrail, it feels like we’ve been “waiting for new things” for the entire expansion already.

So when people ask, “How long is too long to wait for 8.0?”—the answer is that we’re already at the limit. It’s February 2026, there won’t even be a Fan Festival before April, and there’s no real information about what’s coming next until then. Patch 7.5 will likely release in April or May, meaning we’ll be approaching two full years of Dawntrail under a model that was originally designed for two-year expansions.

Traditionally, .5 patches in a three-month cycle lasted about six months. With the current four-month cycle, they simply can’t afford to stretch that to eight months. The gap between 7.5 and 8.0 shouldn’t exceed six months, which would make November the latest acceptable release window.

But honestly, I’m not confident that will happen. At this point, it doesn’t feel like Square Enix is particularly concerned.

If 8.0 is god tier I'll let them cook for an extra year. Just needs to have way more content on and near launch and good job updates. Also a limited job update for blue and beast on launch. No more .5 limited updates then waiting 4 years. The two Limited jobs need more regular updates or more use for them in the overworld please.

Next January.

Basically pushing into 2027 at all is bad at this point.

I have some hope as Yoshi-P himself said we won't be waiting much after the October Fanfest, so my assumption is for December-January, but I'm already cross that we're likely waiting AT LEAST six months from 7.5's drop, and it it pushes to March or beyond, that could kill FFXIV. We're all too on edge and fed up.

Already quit for a year after DTs rather poor performance. Only came back to see if the post DT quests are any good but if it truly takes another /year/ for the expansion to release I might as well call it quits again after this month runs out. Abysmal content scheduling as usual. You'd think by now they would have learned that going 6-7-8 months without any meaningful content would eventually lead to players quitting, especially with how bad this expansion was. Recently went back to check out Dawntrails content overview and I'm still in disbelief how they're advertising these expansions having all of this new content and gameplay features but in reality you really just pay for the entry fee of Dawntrail. Content like Cosmic Exploration, only got released almost a year after DTs release. Beastmaster is still missing, teased features like the strategy board only recently got introduced in 7.4 (!). I really dislike this tactic of drip feeding us advertised expansion features throughout 2+ years while the base expansion launches with the same cookie cutter pipeline we've known since HW.

Not only is 8.0 overdue, knowing how we won't see 50% of the major features they will promote for the first 1.5 years of the game really puts a damper on things. It's no surprise that people will feel extra jaded if the story is terrible, since that is one of the few new contents we get to enjoy for a while (alongside the accompanied battle content like dungeons and extremes). Q4 2026 is all I'm giving this game, SE has been given way too much grace for way too many years to keep treating this game like a money cow they don't need to invest in because the playerbase is complacent and gullible enough to keep throwing money at a subpar product.

I will wait however is long enough to put out a QUALITY product. I'm not so entitled that I cant wait for them to give us something worthy of my money/time.
Will I be sad to have to wait that long... Sure maybe, but just because it takes a while, doesnt mean I'm going to invalidate everything that came before it that captivated me for so long. Just like with 1.0 into 2.0.. I'm fine waiting.

I would anticipate 8.0 will release in early 2027, probably January, based on the release schedule SE has had so far. (It’s a little over 4 months per patch and the .5 patch is double length, so that puts 8.0 about 13 months after 7.4.)

As for the next expansion being worth the wait … only time will tell. Having started playing only 3.5 years ago during 6.1 I’m still a relative newcomer. That said, I do feel the decline in quantity and quality of new content, particularly the writing, in the Dawntrail patches — which is a real problem for a story-driven game. I don’t doubt that 8.0 will bring out an interesting array of new dungeons and Trials, and I am curious to see what the devs do with job design, but I’m skeptical that the writing will pick up.

Meanwhile we’re headed into the 7.4 content lull and I’ve accomplished all the major things I wanted to do this patch, so I’ll soon settle back into getting my weekly limited tomestones and free up more time away from FFXIV for other things.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

YoshiPR's lip service aside, they seem to firmly be in their "They will unconditionally eat slop and beg us for more" phase and just assume that players will put up with any kind of quality or schedule and just stay subbed forever. I'm not expecting anything before Q2 2027.

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Which is sad because Yoshida talked about that very thing after he bailed out XIV the first time. I just hope they pull out of the spiral before it's too late.

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Originally Posted by Palladiamors

after he bailed out XIV the first time.

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yoshi p interview: 8.0 " second rebirth"

If we look at the Patch cycles..


Patch 7.3 released on August 5, 2025

Patch 7.4 released on December 16 2025.


This is a 19 week wait


So if we take December 16 and add 19 weeks to that we will be looking at an approximate release date for Patch 7.5 of 28th April 2026


There were 273 days from Patch 6.5 releasing until Dawntrail released.


If we added 273 days to 28th April 2026 we would get 26th January 2027



I think 8.0 will either be late 2026 (probably december) or Q1 2027.

probably after next wow expansion so like late 2027 mid 2028

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Originally Posted by Deejudanne

probably after next wow expansion so like late 2027 mid 2028

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WoW midnight releases in 3 weeks time..

2nd March.


Lost Titans (12.0) prob wont be ready til late 28 early 29.

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Originally Posted by NightHour

WoW midnight releases in 3 weeks time..

2nd March.


Lost Titans (12.0) prob wont be ready til late 28 early 29.

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Midnight's coming out about a year and a half after War Within, so I doubt it'll be quite that long.

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Originally Posted by NightHour

If we look at the Patch cycles..


Patch 7.3 released on August 5, 2025

Patch 7.4 released on December 16 2025.


This is a 19 week wait


So if we take December 16 and add 19 weeks to that we will be looking at an approximate release date for Patch 7.5 of 28th April 2026


There were 273 days from Patch 6.5 releasing until Dawntrail released.


If we added 273 days to 28th April 2026 we would get 26th January 2027



I think 8.0 will either be late 2026 (probably december) or Q1 2027.

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At minimum 8.0 won't release before JP FanFest, end October/start November. We did get a hit that it might come soon after JP-FF, but you have to add some time for general marketing to drum up hype for those that don't follow the FFs, and the whole media tour. If that takes under a month, it could be November 27th for early access. That's roughly the same release time EW had, but after that they did say they would like to avoid launching the game up to the holidays again. So it's easier to push it to January. And that will still keep it in the same fiscal year.

Can't wait to hear more about those sweet words that nobody falls for anymore. We still don't have housing updates, we still don't have criterion, we still don't have a beastmaster job that was talked so much about it.

It will be Jan 2027...

I actually don't think it will be too long though, as they've back-loaded a lot of content, for a lot of different players... But I suppose the question here will be is whether the content will have much staying power.

I see a lot of people saying it will be in 2027. The question is not when do you think SE will release it, but, when do you think it's too long to wait.

As I said earlier, the cycle patch of this expansion is already broken. They release content on a "2 year model" between expansion and try to stretch it to 3 years. It simply doesn't work. Even when Yoshi-P told it would be 4 month instead of 3 between patch cycle, history already show us 2 release with 19 weeks of delay, like the lattest one. 19 week is closest to 5 months than 4 months. The 7.41 have been 2 weeks late than what we usually have.

I'm not here to make excuses to SE. We were able to have a good quality expansion in the past, with the 2 years models. If they reduce their team, or split the money/teams on other project, it's not the problem of the XIV players and we should be loud about it.

So, for me, even if I don't trust they'll do it, the clear answer is anything after November this year is a pure insult to every players of XIV.

That leave them, if they take the promised 4 month (and not 5) : 7.5 -> April 2026
8.0 in November leave them 7 months. It was usually 6 months between .5 patch and expansion for HW and SB and ShB. EW had a pandemic and DT is just slow. So 7 month on this calculation even give them an extra month + the time to do the last Fan Fest.

Anything after November is just an hard slap in the face of every players and an insult. I really hope that Yoshi-P do realize that he his slowly killing the game that he saved....

Which is why my answer is January. That's at the furthest edge of a reasonable time frame based upon everything we know so far with the current content release schedule, Fanfest's schedule, and Yoshi-P's own words stating 8.0 is coming very soon after Japan's Fanfest.

If they try to stretch it into February or March, fiscal year be damned, 8.0 could be immaculate but that's just too much time to expect the majority of players to still care.

If 8.0 does end up being awesome, there will be a number of players that will happily return to play after leaving during DT, but maintaining current numbers while still courting those same players that like FFXIV but fell off needs to be the goal.

Either way, we still don't know when it will come out. I'm honestly looking forward to what we're going to get in 8.0.

For me its more a case of how long is too soon, they need to take their time and do major overhaul of the game. People will come back to the game, they can re-build the player base, but they have to get with the times.

Personally I’d say this all really depends on communication. If they took extra time to make an expansion but actually communicated why, how they’re addressing it, let us see whatever we’re able to, etc etc, I wouldn’t really mind that much.

But, when it’s mostly just complete radio silence now, it’s hard not to start thinking ‘is then even coming anymore’ lol. Like with Beastmaster. The fact it’s only coming in the final patch kinda sucks, but if they had actually shown us pretty much anything about the job, let us know what the issues were and how they intend to address them, even just like a basic concept of what to expect lol.

Ultimately I’d say going the way we’re going now I’d want to see it like, very soon lol they give us nothing and we are famished. If they actually communicated with players in some form beyond the occasional live-letter (where they still usually say very little lol) I’d be much more forgiving about the time frame.

Not to say that I’d be cool with like, waiting 10 years but they say ‘please look forward to it’ every month lol.

NA Fanfest tends to be a bit of a drip feed, then months of nothing after. That's been my experience anyway. So we'll get a small trailer, the name, location, and maybe a job announcement or a teaser to one. Then a slide show of coming attractions. Then a live letter the following day. Hope they shake it up, though they've always played things a little too safe.

So I'm with most who think later this year, usually among a big release of another game (My money is on Monster Hunter Wilds Master Rank expansion).

The patch cycles already feel long enough, if they came out and said it will be end of 2027 that they will release the expansion I would consider just stopping playing until closer to expansion release, if it’s still of any interest to me of course.

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Originally Posted by Connor

But, when it’s mostly just complete radio silence now, it’s hard not to start thinking ‘is then even coming anymore’ lol. Like with Beastmaster. The fact it’s only coming in the final patch kinda sucks, but if they had actually shown us pretty much anything about the job, let us know what the issues were and how they intend to address them, even just like a basic concept of what to expect lol

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Yeah we haven’t gotten so much as a tease of what the job will look like, how it will play, what the job icon will be or even any artwork!

But one of the things that really bugs me is that I’ve been capped on Poetics all expansion. I could have been using those, over the patches, getting tome gear sets for every 10 levels of BST. But we don’t even know what gear category it’s going to fall into.