Calculating the Wait FanFest/Patches -- Next Expansion in 2027?

[CaptainLagbeard]

April should be 7.5 based on the whole 4 month patch cycle. No idea about 7.55 and 7.58, but they're not usually several months apart. DT will probably entirely finish sometime in May.

As for next expansion, there's no real way of knowing how long it will take for them to get it made.

[Jeeqbit]

April should be 7.5 based on the whole 4 month patch cycle. No idea about 7.55 and 7.58

I'm expecting the extra week due to the holidays so 7.5 will most likely be early May.

they're not usually several months apart.

6.5: 2nd October 2023
6.55: 16th January 2024 (3 months later)

5.5: 13th April 2021
5.55: 25th May 2021 (1 month later ish)

4.5: 7th January 2019
4.55: 12th February 2019 (1 month later ish)

There was a 1 month gap until Endwalker, as you can see, but so far they have upheld the Endwalker changes. And the Fanfest timing further supports that they will.

[FeyFavilla]

Amusingly, most of my single player gaming has just been other Square-Enix games (Ivalice Chronicles, Pixel Remasters, Chrono Trigger). Which is probably fine from their perspective, they still got money, one-time payment though it was.

What's actually damning though is that I've debated dipping my toes back into SWTOR, and that I may finally make the jump from just being a "preferred" account and actually start subscribing while I put FF14 on break after I finish transferring, because god knows I don't want to be on Dynamis anymore, especially right around an expansion if they decide to lock it down again.

You may be playing SE games but that is statistically unlikely the majority of players here, and sadly does not nearly give them the same amount of money as FFXIV. Far as I understood when I looked at their financial report this MMO is their cash cow still and it boggles my mind that they would plug their ears and scream they can't hear us instead of trying to make things work.
Ignoring personal gripes, as a company you just don't do that. If they drop FFXIV they will never have another chance because the broader population will not trust them with their money anymore, at least when it comes to another MMO, and I suspect it will greatly hurt their image within the base.
But what do we know, we are just the consumers, not the high and mighty old gaming companies. Mother knows best.

[Shistar]

If they drop FFXIV they will never have another chance because the broader population will not trust them with their money anymore, at least when it comes to another MMO, and I suspect it will greatly hurt their image within the base. .

Not only that, it'll leave a huge stain on the Final Fantasy name. This game was the first FF ever for millions of players. If they get a bad experience from this one, chances are they might not have any interest to try the others even if it's not the same genre.
The only reason I'm kinda considering trying other FFs is because I love this one and I see there are references I'm not catching, but yeah... not a good look if this one experiences a slow and painful death. I wouldn't expect future FFs to be incredibly successful after that...

[Veritas-Ancora]

Yoshida is notorious for overexaggerating. Without any real context, "not a long wait" would still be accurate if 8.0 dropped in March or April since that's still less than the six month delay between Endwalker's final patch and Dawntrail.

With that said, I suspect it'll be near the end of January to early February as their target.

I would agree with this assessment. It's a shame that it's releasing in 2027 if that's the case but hopefully the content comes out sooner.

[Voidmage]

I agree, but they did it with Dawntrail. Instead of the standard 5 months between .5 and expansion release, we had something like 9 months to wait for Dawntrail, just a little longer than Endwalker which was understandably delayed due to the effects of Covid. They've done this twice now, so instead of the wait being 9 months why not a whole 14 months at that point?

I hope they don't do that but they seem to really like June-August as a release period. If they simply replicate the 9 months again it should be around February 2027.

It will not be in summer 2027, absolutely not, like almost zero percent.
The only reason DT was allowed to have such a gap was because the trust was still there and even that patience of the players was getting extremely thin at the end of the EW patches.
It was in at a time when they were still high on their success and kind of arrogant. They have been completely humbled since then.

Right now they even do things like glamour unlock, something they outright denied in the past and it's obvious that they see the dwindling player numbers and are not happy with that and glamour unlock according to the translation on Discord from Famitsu was originally planned to be announced at Fanfest, another sign of how they do realize they have to deliver.
(And despite some people on reddit thinking otherwise, he said in the last Famitsu interview that the glamour restrictions weren't technical in nature and it was really him alone who prevented that and still would have preferred to keep it locked)

Yoshida also outright said that things will go fast after the japanese fanfest and that was even more unambiguous in japanese actually.
December 2026 or beginning 2027 is way more realistic and even that is a long wait time already given we only get one patch that year.

Like at this point and with all that is happening, someone would need to be an absolute doomer to realistically think that they will wait until summer 2027.

[RedLolly]

The also stated in the interview just released that they are looking into expanding things in character creator.

The example he used was "Like giving more options for moles but not allowing a Lalafell to wear Au Ra horns." So we can expect new facial textures and toggle-able details at the very least that make sense for each race, but no like, mixed race options.


They're actually listening and acting NOW.

[Selsix]

They have been completely humbled since then.

No offense but I'll believe this when I see it for myself. The DT patches have been absolutely horrid since the alleged "humbling". The game is dying and the only "course correction" I've seen is them pulling the emergency lever on glam restrictions which while great comes too little too late. We need sweeping changes to design philosophy and more content and there's been zero signs of this being in the works.

[Hyperia]

They're actually listening and acting NOW.

I wish it didn't have to take 50% of the active players to quit the game to get their attention.

Everybody in my family has quit the game with little prospects of returning and my FC is nearly dead, and it was thriving all the through Endwalker but it started to die in the patches and DT finished it off.

At this point, the collector's edition of 8.0 should come with a skip to 8.0 potion, that would help get people to come back. DT didn't happen, skip it, or lore it away as a "side quest". It's time to make 8.0 a new starting point for players and returners who want to immediately catch up with everybody and skip anything they have not done already.

[Veritas-Ancora]

I wish it didn't have to take 50% of the active players to quit the game to get their attention.

Everybody in my family has quit the game with little prospects of returning and my FC is nearly dead, and it was thriving all the through Endwalker but it started to die in the patches and DT finished it off.

At this point, the collector's edition of 8.0 should come with a skip to 8.0 potion, that would help get people to come back. DT didn't happen, skip it, or lore it away as a "side quest". It's time to make 8.0 a new starting point for players and returners who want to immediately catch up with everybody and skip anything they have not done already.

I really don't know what they can do to offer a skip to 8.0 but it would be welcomed. I wouldn't mind if the level cap stayed at 100 and there was just a whole new story that you could play in 8.0 from L91 to L100.

Dawntrail really is the worst content they've ever put out and it's a shame. The FF9 references are mid at best for a game as good as FF9, and the story wasn't worth the trouble.

Dawntrail is a sore that will never go away, otherwise. People will have to play it to enjoy anything past it, and it's just going to be a really difficult slug to push through for all players current and years down the line. I see this killing a lot of subscriptions in the future.