Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood Release Date Announced
By Rory Young 26 December 2016
The annual Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Tokyo, Japan is dropping huge Stormblood announcements including the expansion’s launch date and the new Red Mage class.
While everyone’s busy with the holidays, Final Fantasy XIV players have just wrapped up a holiday of their own. It’s the annual Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Tokyo, where the game’s creative team goes to discuss and reveal the MMO’s upcoming content plans. The two-day event is kicked off with a keynote event where project director Naoki Yoshida, Yoshi-P, drops his big announcements. This year, coming off the reveal of the Stormblood expansion in October, Yoshi-P could share specifics.
Yoshi-P had plenty to reveal regarding Final Fantasy XIV‘s Stormblood expansion, but the highlight had to be the announcement of one of the new classes. Red Mage will be playable with the release of Stormblood, the fan-favorite that goes all the way back to the original Final Fantasy RPG. Red Mage is a hybrid class with powerful spellcasting, focusing on high-speed positioning and chain-spells. And of course the Red Mage’s weapon will be the rapier, along with a special new magical crystal.
As always, Yoshi-P teased the next class to be revealed too. His t-shirt this time featured Spider-Man, which is perhaps the most mysterious tease from Yoshi-P yet. Usually his hints are rather on the nose. Fans are coming up with several theories as to what it could mean. The most popular theory believes the class is the Samurai, because there’s a popular Japanese samurai version of Spider-Man. Other theories say that Spider-Man is an acrobat, so the class could be an Acrobat or Dancer. Time will tell.
A few release dates were also announced during the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest keynote, including the big one – Stormblood‘s. The Stormblood expansion will launch on June 20 in 2017. Before Stormblood launches, Square Enix has a couple more major patches to launch. 3.5, which concludes the events of Heavensward and starts the events of Stormblood, is broken into two parts. Part one launches on January 17, a new year surprise, while part two will split the difference and launch in March.
There were plenty of other Stormblood reveals during the keynote as well. The new 24-man Alliance Raid is titled “Return to Ivalice” and designed by Final Fantasy XII and Tactics Director Matsuno. And a new Raid Series named The Bend of Time will star Omega Weapon. A new underwater beast tribe of lamias was shown named the Ananta, who worship the Primal Lakshmi. That’s tied into the feature addition of swimming and diving in Stormblood.
Plenty more was revealed in both the Keynote and the following producer’s live letter, but those are the major highlights from Final Fantasy XIV‘s Fan Fest in Tokyo. Well, that and Roegadyn speedos and other new beach outfits. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months.
Final Fantasy XIV is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. Stormblood, the MMO’s second major expansion, will launch on June 20 in 2017 for the PC and PlayStation 4. PS3 support will be ending with the launch of Stormblood.
