Square Enix is rounding off a story around ten years in the making when Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion releases in November. If you’re booking time off work to dart through it all, though, you might be wondering how long the expansion actually is?
During a recent Endwalker preview event, director Naoki Yoshida hammered home that this will be the most significant expansion yet, comparing its story content the game’s last big expansion. “Especially for the story, when we look at the amount of text, cut scenes and so on,” Yoshida says (thanks, MMORPG), “I don’t want to give such a comparative figure, but there’s a lot more here than in Shadowbringers.”
Endwalker will wrap up what the team calls the “Hydaelyn and Zodiark Saga”, which, broadly speaking, features two groups blessed by different entities, fated to lock horns with each other in a series of near-apocalyptic skirmishes. The story has continued through various expansions over the years, from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward to Stormblood and Shadowbringers.
Yoshida also revealed during the event that the MMORPG has surpassed 24 million players and is the most profitable Final Fantasy game in the series. To put that into perspective, the game passed four million players back in 2015, several years after FFXIV’s famously troubled launch.
“You all know just how hard things were for us with the original Final Fantasy 14,” Yoshida says (thanks, IGN). “Since then, we were able to transform the title into one that provides a major contribution to our company’s profits.”
We also got a chance to speak to Yoshida during the event. Alongside some of the intricacies that is server management during a big launch, we also talked about the community’s desires for safer, better social features in the game.
The Final Fantasy XIV release date is set for November 23, 2021, with early access kicking off on November 19.