July 1, 2020 Final Fantasy XIV patch 5.3 is now set to launch on August 11.
Final Fantasy XIV‘s 5.3 patch has been a long, long time coming thanks to COVID-19-related delays, but the end is finally in sight. FFXIV chief Naoki Yoshida has confirmed that the Reflections in Crystal update will land on August 11 after several delays, and has detailed the team’s approach to further updates following those setbacks.
“As of now, Patch 5.3 – Reflections in Crystal is scheduled to release on Tuesday, August 11, 2020,” Yoshida writes in the latest Letter from the Producer. “We did everything we could to try and release this update at some point in mid-July, but in the end, we determined more time was needed to thoroughly test and debug the next alliance raid of YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse and the new large-scale encounters of the resistance weapons content.”
Previous estimates from the devs had suggested that 5.3 could launch as soon as mid-July, but Yoshida says that hope fell through when the team realised it wouldn’t be possible for the bulk of the QA team to test from home. Thus, the office had to be reorganised to accommodate social distancing, which compounded the delays.
“Though it cost us roughly two months,” Yoshida says, “our primarily home-based work system is now securely established, and we plan to return to our regular release schedule of roughly every three and a half months after Patch 5.3.”
Yoshida adds that there are no plans to accelerate development in an effort to catch up on the next round of patches, because that would “only result in cutting content and sacrificing the quality of our work”.
The full blog post has a small teaser of what to expect from future patches – a mysterious blueprint of a six-wheeled tank. Based on the revised release schedule, we should see patch 5.4 around November or December this year.
Square Enix has already provided early Final Fantasy XIV patch 5.3 notes, but we’ll get more detail on what to expect from the MMORPG‘s next big update over the next handful of weeks.