Quote Originally Posted by NefarioCall View Post
What is still unclear to me is from what point in time the "Nentan'i" refers to and the method by which we see this.

1) Yoshi took over FFXIV in January and if memory serves correctly, the Area redesign`project was introduced by about March.

2) The beast man strongholds in this patch will be open world areas. By the looks of it, they will be transposed onto existing parts of the main areas. Is the area redesign one big all at once patch or will it be done in parts. in the 2nd case, we would be seeing the beginnings of this in patch 1.19. `The first stage of redesigns`.

Well, the post I quoted does indicate that they had already finished some basic tasks related to the redesign (such as the planning) as of June. However, the wording of the post gave the impression that players should expect to wait a year plus for everything to get done. Certainly that's not guaranteed, but that's how the post sounds in Japanese.

You make a good point about releasing the redesign in "stages". Who knows how it will be handled? Maybe we will get the first parts of the redesign soon. The "nentan'i" seems to refer to the expected finish date. Personally, I fell like the beastman strongholds don't seem to fit into the idea of the fundamental redesign that Yoshida has spoken of. Based on the videos, they seem to be adding new objects to preexisting environments. That's not bad: I'm excited to see the new strongholds. But what I HOPE to see out of the final redesign is the addition of new environments alongside fundamental alterations to the current environments beyond simply adding objects.