announcement showcase!

[Shougun]

I'm hoping we get a decent amount of information to digest and work with. I think we're at the point in the game's development cycle where if it's serious about being relevant in the long term...it needs to start shaking things up a bit more and being bolder about what it sets out to do.

I'm hoping for some technical improvements and graphics updates including more character customization

I don't mean this as literal, although it could be, but more metaphorically if FFXIV is going to be their long term "no intention to make another mmo" mmo then I do hope they begin to incorporate some cataclysm like thought processes. Which is again to hit upon more that metaphorical representation as WoW has clearly shown their willingness to rebuild systems both technical and gameplay based while also updating their graphics (both future and past, and to point out technically WoW has done this then and continues to do this - it's just more of a pinnacle example and spiritual archon of the imagery). It might be fair to paint certain gameplay changes positively or negatively based on your bias, that part is more in the air and personal interpretation of what's fun, but say for example the team looked at glamour system and said "wow that is going to be extremely difficult" and so they dedicated an entire team to solving just that problem (and WoW's glamour log is substantially better than FFXIV's, and pretty good in general, although you might point out other mmos that do have better ones).

It could be a cheeky joke but Yoshida has made hints at future systems before that came to fruition very similarly to as said in the past, and so when he jokes about a cataclysm like event, at least I personally believe, that it also might be a cheeky hint rather than just a joke - as he has on /multiple/ occasions talked about dropping another dalamud.

If the game is going to begin it's cycle out like FFXI, which happens to be approaching the age that FFXIV took FFXI's place (~10 years), then eh whatever cataclysm I guess isn't really that important, but if they're like "FFXIV, FFXIV 6 more years, FFXIV 10 more years, FFXIV forever" then I do hope they start showing signs of igniting the core forges more often rather than just the peripheral forges that build on top of whatever is existing. Which again doesn't mean a literal cataclysm "just like WoW, just like FFXIV 1.0" has to happen, but those hyper engines charging rather than the regular thrusters. Assuming they're going to keep FFXIV as their flagship mmo for a significantly longer period of time at least, maybe in / around the end of 6.0 after delivering some stellar sort of conclusion to the MSQ of FFXIV they introduce the next mmo (and then after FFXIV would likely continue to get expansions but each one would also likely be self contained experiences, just like FFXI wasn't immediately abandoned after FFXIV 1.0 or even FFXIV 2.0).