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Final Fantasy XIV’s North American Fan Festival is currently underway in Anaheim, California, and with it has come some huge announcements about the MMORPG’s future. During the festival’s two-hour-long opening showcase, game director Naoki Yoshida (referred to as Yoshi-P by the community) announced that XIV’s next expansion, Evercold, is slated to release in January 2027, and brings with it two new classes and several major changes. But while Yoshida delivered a lot of exciting news on stage, the director had plenty to say about the game off stage, too.<\/p>\n
Following the showcase, Yoshida met with members of the press to discuss both Evercold (which almost had a very different name, by the way) and Final Fantasy XIV as a whole. During this session, a reporter asked the director if he had ever considered creating a single-player Final Fantasy XIV–one more in line with the majority of the series’ numbered titles. With zero hesitation, Yoshida replied, “Yes.”<\/p>\n
“There are still a lot of people out there who look at an online Final Fantasy and they say, ‘Well, an online Final Fantasy isn’t a real Final Fantasy,” Yoshida explained. He mentioned that, despite working on XIV for well over a decade now, even bringing just one more person to the world of Final Fantasy XIV remains an important mission to him. Naturally, this includes those who feel that XIV “isn’t a real Final Fantasy,” and would potentially jump in if it was a single-player experience.<\/p>\n