Island Sanctuary is being discontinued?

[IvoryHawk]

I've seen 2 youtubers say it twice now that Island Sanctuary isn't being developed for in 7.x, where was this said?

[Toukichiful]

It was said a NA fan fest, that there will be a small update in 7.0 and that could be the last.

[Avoidy]

It'll still exist, but yeah outside of some extremely optimistic thinking they're basically abandoning further development of it in 7.0 as alluded to in some Q&A session, can't keep track of them all.
Saddest part is it really looked like they were laying the groundwork for genuine instanced housing. We got an enormous instanced front yard. There were housing frameworks in the system. And then they just stopped, lmao.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Because if they allowed instanced housing on the island, the money from subs due to forty five day log in or house go boom would drop to absolute zero and people could cancel their subs without fear of losing anything. Yoshi does not respect anyone's time except his own. As if IS was going to have housing.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Good. Not sure why so much effort was put into this to begin with.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

It'll still exist, but yeah outside of some extremely optimistic thinking they're basically abandoning further development of it in 7.0 as alluded to in some Q&A session, can't keep track of them all.
Saddest part is it really looked like they were laying the groundwork for genuine instanced housing. We got an enormous instanced front yard. There were housing frameworks in the system. And then they just stopped, lmao.

To be fair, the moment I saw that datamined area the first thing that immediately came screeching to my game developer experience mind was "QA testing zone". I doubt it was ever anything more than that with players just projecting their hopes onto something it was never going to be. At the same time however, such an instanced system could be categorized entirely separated from Island Sanctuary internally & by the devs, meaning calling the actual IS itself feature complete even if that theoretical instance housing section was still being worked on would make logical sense.

As far as the topic, yes it was confirmed it would be feature complete with a small update in 7.0 in recent interviews in Famitsu & Dengeki - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ws_65_edition/

[Jeeqbit]

They said something that implied it wouldn't be continued in 7.x unless there was somehow a lot of demand for it.

This is normal and expected. They do not continue developing a feature like this once the expansion is over. Let me give you some examples...

• Palace of the Dead, released in Heavensward (3.x), did not continue development after 3.5x.
• Eureka, released in Stormblood (4.x), did not continue development after 4.5x.
• Bozja, released in Shadowbringers (5.x), did not continue development after 5.5x.
• Firmament, released in Shadowbringers (5.x), did not continue development after 5.5x.

[Connor]

Sad, because they could’ve really made some quality content if they continued developing it. But then, it’s not like they don’t have a track record for this sort of thing, so it’s not exactly surprising

[Musashidon]

they have more and new life style content coming up and honestly with how SE does things it will just be IS 2.0 so while yea we won't see much more to this iteration of it the chances of us just getting a new island somewhere else is likely what is actually going to happen.

[ronibosch]

It brought us some pretty nice glam items and mounts (and a rather quaint scene with a couple of lizard ladies), but honestly I'm cool with it being discontinued.

I'll still chill on my island, regardless.

(Also, I feel like it quickly became an afterthought to the devs.)