Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Endwalker released on December 7th, 2021 and Dawntrail releases on July 2nd, 2024. Based on that, we could assume 8.0 will release on December 10th, 2026 (which will be a consistent 2 and a half years).

If they try really hard to make it like other expansions and reduce the patch lull from 8-9 months to 5 like in the past, then they might manage July, but so far things have only got longer.
Isn't someone else in forum has pointed out the expansion credit rolls has showed that the size of FFXIV development team has increased?

The size of development team has increased.
Yet the months between patch release is increased, at the same time the amount of content on patch release is getting lesser and lesser.
While they also decided that island sanctuary will no longer supported in DT.

Strange don't you think? That even with the size of development team increased, they still refused to dedicate themselves on develop the big content feature they introduced on expansion such as GC rank and squadron, deep dungeon, eureka/bozja, hard mode dungeon, recently island sanctuary. And dropped some of introduced big feature on some expansion.

According to what I have gather so far...

SB expansion introduced ultimate raid, introduced field operation such as eureka, continued hard mode dungeon as well as optional dungeon, continued optional boss trial questline, continued deep dungeon, introduced Blue Mage.

SHB expansion dropped hard mode dungeon, turn optional dungeon into MSQ dungeon, dropped deep dungeon, delayed ultimate raid to EW expansion, continued field operation as Bozja, continued optional boss trial, continued Blue Mage

EW expansion introduced Island Sanctuary, merged optional dungeon with optional boss trial into part of the MSQ, introduced PVP Crystal Conflict, introduced Criterion Dungeon, dropped field operation, re-continued deep dungeon, released ultimate raid that supposed to released in SHB, continued Blue Mage

DT expansion, according on what we got so far, dropped Island Sanctuary, continued field operation, continued deep dungeon, continued Criterion Dungeon, continued PVP Crystal Conflict, as the other still waiting for confirmation on Dawntrail release.

PVP so far is the only big feature that has done right and still receive update and support.
And Criterion can done well with proper reward structure.