Live Letter news hope: Fan Fest... what's going on?

[Kozh]

Yeah, I'm of like mind that we probably won't be seeing anything FanFest related this year while we're still in x.2. Its been almost a year since DT went live, so even just using two patches per year as a base, we won't be in x.4 territory until a year from now.

... wow that's kinda sad. For the amount of content we got, we should've get shorter time between patches.

[Underscore]

I hope the next one has more chairs.

[Jeeqbit]

Endwalker was an outlier as it was pushed back due to 2020. Dawntrail released in July, back on the original expansion release schedule.

Endwalker wasn't an outlier in terms of patch cycle. The timeframe between the final patch and expansion release used to be 5 months, but the wait for Endwalker was 8 months. Similar, we waited 8 months or so for Dawntrail.

With this, the Endwalker changes seem to be permanent and not an outlier. I am expecting that the expansion release cycle is no longer 2 years, but 2 years and a half, meaning we will alternate between June-August release dates and November(ish) release dates for the forseeable future.

This is relevant to Fanfest on the basis that I cannot see a Fanfest happening before a .3 patch. It wouldn't make sense to me. A trailer for the new expansion during 7.2 would be insanely early in the patch cycle...

[Voidmage]

DT also releasing in the summer has no bearing on the cadence of their patch series or expansion development time & therefore the timing of their fan-fests, which have increased every expansion so far. If the time between 7.5 and 8.0 isn't longer than 6.5 to 7.0 I'll eat my hat. 8.0 isn't releasing in the Summer unless its the summer of 2027. Fan fests aren't coming soon when 8.0 isn't coming out until the final months of 2026 at the absolute earliest. It's still June of 2025 for crying out loud.

8.0 will probably come out fall 2026.
Summer 2026 will be too soon and forcing it into summer 2027 might even kill this game entirely because peoples patience is already thin with the patch cycles and it would need some huge changes way above the graphics update to defend that.

They will probably change between summer and fall like Jeeqbit wrote.


I think there will be a small first announcement of fan fest and I am honestly really interested in it.
The DT one was already not that hype inducing in the community outside of the promised content and now that this content has shown its myriad weaknesses people will probably keep a really close eye on the promises and especially at things like the story and the content spreading as well as the jobs.

[Daralii]

... wow that's kinda sad. For the amount of content we got, we should've get shorter time between patches.

Please understand, they're busy with 2 remakes and what is either XVII or an original property.

[Anonemoose]

The FanFest has to be happening soon because all the FFXIV streamers and personalities have stopped saying anything bad about the game so as to not jeopardize their invitations.

[Ryaze]

8.0 will probably come out fall 2026.
Summer 2026 will be too soon and forcing it into summer 2027 might even kill this game entirely because peoples patience is already thin with the patch cycles and it would need some huge changes way above the graphics update to defend that.

They will probably change between summer and fall like Jeeqbit wrote.


I think there will be a small first announcement of fan fest and I am honestly really interested in it..

The time between the final major patch of an expansion to the following expansion launch has been increasing every expansion since SB. To release in the fall of 2026, they'd have to push out 8.0 significantly faster than 7.0, just to release in what is technically fall but literally still the month of December. While that's technically possible, I don't think it's likely at all. Even to push 8.0 out in what people traditionally think of when they think of the Fall months (September/October) they'd have to push out the game faster than from 4.5 to 5.0. That would be 25 weeks (4.5 to ShB launch) for mid/late Oct compared to the 39 weeks for DT, which would land on Jan 26th, 2027.

Additionally, there's another factor to consider. At the Korean Fanfest prior to DT, Yoshi-P told the audience that their plan for 8.0 is to launch BOTH the Chinese and Korean versions simultaneously with the international version. Now, at the time he said the work on the Chinese end of whatever infrastructure was necessary for this was already completed, but not the Korean infrastructure. This isn't the issue. The issue is that China's version of FFXIV launched DT roughly 3 months behind the international version, and the Korea version roughly 5 months behind. Now they've slowly been closing this gap for Korea with releasing the major patches on a slightly shorter delay compared to the expansion launch, but the Korean version is still ~4 months behind the international version. While China's patch cycle is unchanged and still 3 months behind the international version.

So they can 1) Drastically shorten the delay between patches for the Korea and Chinese versions to catch up with the international version, 2) Delay the international release of 8.0, or 3) A combination of the two. So far they've barely done any of #1.

If they don't significantly shorten these gaps, with the current gap Korea wont get 7.5 until the very last week of August 2026. Not to mention 7.55 which as you know contains the last MSQ as well as most likely the final zone of the Occult Crescent and the final stage of the relic grind. They're not going to release 8.0 in the Fall and essentially hose both the Chinese and Korean player-bases out of having time to experience the end of expansion content. Either Yoshi-P doesn't live up to his promise that he told Korea, or 8.0 takes longer to come out than people would like.

Unfortunately I think any sooner than Q1 of 2027 is a pipe dream.

[Anonemoose]

Either Yoshi-P doesn't live up to his promise ...

Heh, that would literally never happen.

[Voidmage]

snip

Don’t know. It’s just my prediction.
I don’t think we will ever see an expansion being released in the beginning of a year, thats a really undesired spot for such things right after Christmas sales.
On the other hand delaying it to summer 2027, I don’t know if the players would accept it at this point. That would be an enormous wait time for a game that hasn’t gone a single patch without massive backlash for a while now.
I don’t think even they would be so daring.
Personally I see 8.0 around October / November 2026.

Yoshida promises many things tbh, fact is though that the china and Korea versions have their own hurdles and things outside his hands. I think it’s far more realistic to see a joined 8.0 release, even if 7.55 would have been close for some of them.

But maybe you are right.
At the end of the day what decides if the community is willing to wait will be what they see in the fanfest and ho boy do they have to deliver this time.

[Aruji-sama]

I'd rather they use the time and money to fix the game. It's not a "fan-fest" when players and customers are furious and dropping the game one after another, just saying.