Today in Las Vegas, Square Enix pulled back the veil on their newest upcoming expansion to the incredibly popular MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. Titled “Shadowbringers,” Final Fantasy’s newest expansion brings players to the brink of finally taking down the Garlean Empire.
What will become of the Warrior of Light and the Allied Armies? Who is the Warrior of Darkness? Shadowbringers aims to answer these questions and many more when it hits shelves in summer 2019.
The third expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, Shadowbringers will bring with it an expansive story, new jobs and systems. While initially the new jobs weren’t revealed initially, the keynote ended with a bang, with the President and CEO of Square Enix coming on stage dressed as a Blue Mage.
The Blue Mage is the first limited job to come to Final Fantasy XIV. Like Blue Mages of the past, you will be able to learn the skills from monsters or entities such as Shiva, letting you unleash those skills in battle later on. Initially the cap will be level 50, but once the Shadowbringers expansion hits that cap will be raised. The Blue Mage also isn’t tied to any previously released class. Thankfully, players will be able to play the Blue Mage soon, as it’ll release with the upcoming 4.5 update.
Additionally, two new zones were revealed: The Rak’Tika Greatwood, a vast forest with flet cities reminding me of Lorien from Lord of the Rings, and Amh Arang, a desert with ominous looking tilted towns.
Like usual, the new expansion will bring with it new raids and dungeons, but one of the key systems revealed in the keynote was a feature usually associated with single player games: New Game+. This system will allow players to relive stories and quests from previous patches, but at their currrent strength. This is reminiscent of the reflecting pools in The Lord of the Rings Online, but the addition of reliving all of the story makes it compelling enough to try.
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During the show, the Square Enix team also teased a new playable race, however it wasn’t explicitly announced. When producer Naoki Yoshida turned around to reveal the back of his shirt, the crowd erupted seeing Bugs Bunny, fueling speculation that the new race could be the Viera, a rabbit-like race introduced in Final Fantasy XII. Fans have been clamoring for the Viera for years, and it looks like it might finally be happening.
End-game content is coming for crafters as well, giving players the chance to restore the Holy See of Ishgard. It was also teased that player housing might be coming to Ishgard, but only if the players restore it first.
Solo players also have room to rejoice, as a new system called “Trust” is coming to Final Fantasy XIV. Like the system from Final Fantasy XI, Trust will allow solo player the ability to group up with NPCs to complete dungeons in the game. This won’t replace the grouping system, but will give solo players more options to play the way they choose.
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Square Enix also announced the end of 32-bit support for Windows, as well as the World Visit system which will allow players to transfer between servers freely, so long as they are in the same data center, and play with friends on their servers. Progression won’t stop just because you aren’t on your home server, as this will allow you to progress main story scenarios, dungeons and more.
There is so much more coming this weekend at Fanfest, such as the Yoshida’s Letter from the Producer Live at 3:30 pacific. More details about the upcoming 4.5 patch as well as Shadowbringers will be discussed at that panel.
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What did you think of the Final Fantasy XIV Keynote? Excited to see what the team has in store? Let us know in the comments below!
