You have to call Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn by its full, overlong title, because otherwise you risk dismissing the years of rebuilding that went on after its original crummy release, and eventually resulted in the most polished MMO our Nick’s ever played according to his A Realm Reborn review – and gosh, does he play them.
It’s going to be tricky on the tongue, though. Square Enix are readying another colon and another phrase to append to their game’s title. There’s an expansion coming, and it’ll be a biggie.
“The dev team is working really hard, working without sleep, but we are smoothly progressing,” game director Naoki Yoshida told Polygon.
His team at Square Enix are working on upcoming patches, a PS4 launch, and beyond that an expansion that will add again “the [same] amount of content released with the relaunch”.
Yoshida said the team are still going “full throttle” developing “very important” updates – and the expansion will likely be the first time they get to pause and take stock
“I’m not sure I’ll get the realisation that this has actually launched until maybe the first expansion,” he said. “If this was Rocky, and I was in a fighting match, once I knock out the opponent, I could cheer. But that’s not really the case for an MMO. We’ve got to keep going.”
Yoshida expects there will be a Final Fantasy 15 and 16 – but said that Square Enix will “constantly” try to provide players with new reasons to play A Realm Reborn. The game’s last major update included new housing, PvP systems and endgame dungeons. The next, due sometime in March, will feature an endgame primal boss fight, another dungeon, and plenty else besides.
A Realm Reborn is set for a Chinese launch this Summer, and after that it’ll tour South Korea, Russia, Taiwan and the Middle East. Tell us: how are its Western servers doing for pointy-hatted wizards and pointy-weaponed warriors a couple of months after release?