FFXIV: 2023 London Fan Fest Reveals and Thoughts
Posted on October 23, 2023 by Aywren
I’ve had a couple of days to think over the reveals that we got from this past weekend’s FFXIV London Fan Fest. Overall, my hype level is still pretty moderate because I’m just not fully sure what all this expansion is going to be offering in terms of story – which is my biggest focus. I think this is in part because they are keeping story concepts somewhat under wraps still.
But, aside from that, I wanted to talk briefly about my impressions of the other big reveals.
Viper – New Job
Many of us, me included, thought that the new job would reveal a more pirate-type corsair character, with sword and gun combo action. I did wonder about it since LOTRO also just released a corsair class, but that turned out not to be an issue in the end.
Instead, we get a much more rogue-assassin-like Viper job. Dual-wielding two swords that can fuse together to make on twinblade weapon is the highlight of this job. While I’m a touch sad that we didn’t get a swashbuckler, I do like dual-wielding jobs, and I do think we needed a more all-arounder sword job.
I also do think we were in need of a more base rogue job because Ninja overtook the original Rogue class. Ninja is cool and all, but we were missing the rogue elements – I can’t play my Zidane or Astarion alts with Ninja, for example!
My one concern is that Yoshi-P noted this was a strategically complex (or more complex) job, which is not something I’m personally looking to play. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes once we can try it out.
So, overall, I think it’s a good choice, even if I’d have rathered a corsair. I doubt I’ll be making it my main, though.
Of course, speculation has begun on the new caster – many folks feel it will be Green Mage. This is a strong possibility, but they fooled us on Viper, so I’m going to wait and see!
New Zones
Last Fan Fest, we got a look at art for the new zones. This time around, we got a walkthrough video and in-game screens from the areas.
Now I’m not usually one who fangirls the zones previews, but I have to say, I am blown away by the area design this time. It might be the graphics improvements helping out a good deal here, but man. The detail to the small areas and the scope when you zoom out to see the bigger picture – they’re both astounding.
I mean, when I first saw the desert pictured above, I wondered if it was a photo. I feel like world exploration is going to be a big enjoyment for me this time around.
New Lifestyle Content
Lifestyle content are things like Island Sanctuary and Ishgard Restoration – the kind of stuff I like to do. Sadly, they didn’t have the content ready to show for this Fan Fest, so Yoshi-P couldn’t talk about it a whole lot.
He did, however, note that this content would be made for larger groups of people to work together. In fact, in a recent interview, he said that much of the content focus would be less on the solo aspect (since Trusts mean we can do all dungeons on our own now), and more on how to bring people together to play.
I’m fine with that as long as it’s low-stress collaboration. We’ll have to see what it’s all about next Fan Fest.
FFXI Crossover Alliance Raid
The rest of the battle content talk didn’t interest me much, though it does look like they have a few new interesting ideas for dungeons. Not until they announced that the alliance raid series would be a crossover with FFXI for that game’s 20th anniversary.
From the overall response, it sounds like there’s some excitement for this – especially from folks who played or still play the previous MMO. I’m one of those people, though I’ve never played far enough in to get any idea of what the story was actually about, sadly.
So, I’m quite interested in seeing what kind of story, fights, and references we’re going to get. Music, I hope, at least! I’d love to have Ronfaure in FFXIV somewhere!
New Limited Job
I was interested to learn that not only are we going to get continued updates for Blue Mage, but they will release a new limited job closer to the end of the 7.0 cycle. Most folks believe it will be either beastmaster or puppetmaster.
While I’m interested in this, I hope it won’t be as locked into group content as Blue Mage was. I haven’t worked on Blue Mage very much, despite liking the idea of capping skills, because it’s moved into finding BLU groups to run content that I generally don’t run on my main jobs as it is. I just don’t have interest in hitting up raids and trials to collect skills.
Other Stuff
There’s a few other odds n ends that we got to see – like the crossovers with Fall Guys and FFXVI. I’ve not played either of these games, but I’ll try the content out. Especially for a nice-looking dog mount that you can pet. I hear that the Yokai collab will also make a return, but I’m not sure that I need much from it anymore.
The graphical update also looks exciting – maybe some of the work there can help with some of the facial features I don’t care for on some models, especially around the lips. They’ve done what they could to keep the original models overall, but make graphical improvements. So, we won’t get a completely remade model of characters we’ve grown used to, thankfully!
Overall, we had a number of exciting reveals from this Fan Fest. I’m still looking forward to female Hrothgar, though – I had no expectation to see it this time, but I do expect it in Tokyo.
Did you see anything that you found really exciting from this Fan Fest? Are you expecting to try the Viper on release?