FFXIV: Evercold Announcements, My Thoughts on the Future
Posted on May 9, 2026 by Aywren
Final Fantasy XIV Evercold – Releases in January 2027!
I was present at the 2026 FFXIV NA Fanfestival, so I got to be a part of the crowd that welcomed the announcement of the upcoming changes coming in the next expansion. Overall, I felt like “welcomed” is a good word for it – there was much folks were excited about and there is much going to change.
Seasoned players of FFXIV know that change has been something the game has attempted to avoid, almost to detriment, for many years now. Folks have been clamoring for changes to job identity, the 2-minute raiding meta, the rewards system, the cadence of content releases, and much more.
As a casual, some of this has affected me, some of it hasn’t. But I can’t deny that the energy around the game has increased significantly with the announcements of change dropped at the Fanfest. Much for the better. I’ve been seeing so many videos on YouTube titled “We’re Back!” and “I’m Returning” – there’s absolutely an atmosphere of excitement in the air.
It’s taken me a while to sit down and gather my thoughts on all the announcements, but I wanted to take some time to address them and give my feedback. Of course, we have to start at the beginning. The Evercold teaser trailer that was the first thing we saw at Fanfest.
Story and Lore
With that out of the way, I’m going to start by saying that I’m fairly interested in our upcoming trip to 4th reflection! Whereas, with Dawntrail, I remember feeling a sense of uncertainty when I saw the first teaser trailer. I wasn’t captivated by the concepts displayed.
Here, there’s so many questions and a new wide world to explore. It does echo Shadowbringers where we visited the First, and got a chance to learn about the lore and world there. Along with meeting a lovely cast of characters that are still very much beloved.
Some might say that S/E is taking the easy road out by leaning on a story route that has already worked once. Not to mention our side-quests into the 13th from time to time.
Yes, that might be true. But I feel like there’s a logic behind the choice to visit another reflection, and we haven’t done so with a focus for several expansions. So, while it has been done before, and was wildly successful the first time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to try again at this point. Even if that means they’re also falling back on Ascians as a theme.
There’s enough change going on everywhere else that bringing the story back to a familiar place could work very well. We’ll just have to see if they can still weave a world as engaging as the First was back in the day.
New Jobs & Level Cap Raise
I know I’ve mentioned so much about change, but all I’m writing about so far are the things we already expected! Hear me out!
There’s been speculation – and apparently talk amongst the devs – on whether to make the level cap 100 for FFXIV and take future development more horizontal. Seeing that traditionally, Final Fantasy games cap out at level 99, this wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary. However, it seems that the devs have chosen to continue with raising the level cap to 110. Maybe this is because they already have enough changes on their plate? Who knows.
As usual, we’re getting two new jobs. This time, it’s a new Tank and a new Ranged DPS. This was pretty much what we expected to see.
Of course, we won’t know what we’re getting until announcements at future Fanfests. This is typical. And Yoshi-P’s shirt (which often is a hint at what a new job will be) didn’t really clarify much.
So, this will be an interesting reveal. I’m always up for a good Ranged DPS as I do play all of the previous ranged DPS jobs to some extent as side jobs.
Fighting Off Fatigue
The big announcements began with an acknowledgement that FFXIV has been in a state of heavy repeat for years now. As someone who has been subbed and playing since ARR, I’ve long been tired of the Tomestone grind for gear that has to be then repeated every other patch cycle.
I’m not a raider, so I don’t earn raiding gear. I’m also not a part of the Hunt community, which I know can fill your weekly Tomes pretty quickly if you are. Because of that, I’ve run roulettes ad nauseum in this game for a decade now. Sometimes every night of the week.
And let me let you in on a secret: I don’t like running dungeons.
I never have. I never will. But it’s not for the reason I often hear people tout – “It’s boring!”
No. It has nothing to do with design or difficulty (though I will avoid running Expert when there are dungeons I really don’t want to interact with). Being forced to run group content every night just to have decent gear wears me down. It’s exhausting, especially when you have to gear up so many jobs now.
Well, apparently FFXIV realizes this and they’re planning on several things to help with this!
This is the concept of the new player screen, which is subject to change. From this, you can see several things:
- A battlepass like progression bar along the bottom with unlockable rewards
- The mention of Seasons
They announced a weekly-based system for earning gear and rewards, rather than the daily Tomestone roulettes we currently have. And its seems if you missed a previous week, you do have a chance to go back and earn those missed rewards the next week, which is nice.
My question on this is… does this mean there will be less dungeons to run? And if so, will that mean less people are running content? Can you do these runs with Trusts or do you have to run with real people?
This is overall fine for most dungeons, which now have Trusts to carry you through them. You don’t have to rely on scraping up a party, so less people running content is okay there. But when it comes to needing to run story trials, I already have a 20+ minute wait on DPS who are only a few patches behind.
Are they going to finally implement Trusts with all past trials? (Please do!)
This is a concept of what this might look like. You can see the variety of things you can do for points each week. Everything from crafting, gathering, fishing, GATEs, FATEs, and even Frontlines (love how Frontlines has a much higher point motivation! XD).
But I have questions about this. Like, for my characters who are done with MSQ, that’ll never be an option. Do I get something else to take the place of that? Again, do trials and dungeons require parties or can they be done with Trusts? Will there be a specific roulette – will roulettes still exist?
I know this is a work in progress screen, but I’m so very curious how it will work!
I’ve said for years that there’s SO MUCH more to do in FFXIV than just sit in dungeons and duty finder for a few hours and log out. I’m happy that they’re addressing this by encouraging people to do more than just RUNRUNRUNRUNRUN battle content.
Character Focused Design
This is where things start to get HUGE for me.
This starts with an update to the Amoury System. At first, I wasn’t sure what this meant until I saw…
FFXIV is known for the Armoury System which allows you to play all jobs on one character. But up until this point, you still had to focus on gearing up one job/role at a time.
With this change, you gear up on one job, and you can then reflect the ilvl of the gear to any other job you have at the proper level. Meaning, once you finish gearing, you’re done. You’re not locked into playing just one job or role because that’s the only thing you have geared. You can try anything at any time!
This is something I think Black Desert Online kinda has (I don’t know the details of it), and I LOVE this idea. Simply because there’s no more… “Well, I’ve finished my tome gear for my Red Mage, but now my White Mage still has trash gear, and I’ve gotta work on that, too.”
In fact, that’s part of the reason why I dropped playing some of my alts. It was just too much to do on more than one character, much less just my main.
I have a lot of questions about this, though. Like what about materia? What about stats?
I guess we’ll have to see.
Character Action Skins. This is an excellent idea that I’ve seen other players ask for in the past.
Guild Wars 2 and LOTRO both have something similar in that you can pick an animation for a common activity – such as a PVP finisher or casting a Return spell. Providing options to customize in little ways like this is fun, and maybe we can see some of the battle animations that have been cut in the past return (dragoon pole dance, anyone?).
More things to work towards in a game is golden!
This is also pretty huge! Having a color picker to expand the range of hair and skin tones is amazing by itself!
When I went to create a Dancing Green alt, I learned really quickly that the neon color options for hair that some of the Solution 9 folks use are not available to players. I’d hoped that maybe we’d get extra hair colors added in – somewhat like GW2 did with their hair dye system. But I’d never dream they’d go a step beyond with a full-on color picker!
Yes please!
Battle Content and Duty Finder
We also have updates to battle content types and how duty/party finder is going to work going forward.
All of this is well and good, but I was much more interested in their talk of improving content in the open world areas. For years, I’ve mourned the fact that FFXIV has such a static open world – and I’m not talking about getting shipped away into little side locations like Bozja or Occult Crescent.
I want to do large-scale, dynamic content with folks in the regular zones. Compared to games like Guild Wars 2, which has mastered the fun of on-the-fly open-world content without needing a party, FFXIV zones are sadly dead. FATEs do not cut it anymore, and haven’t been preferred for a very long time.
Give us world bosses that aren’t on timers that stretch days long. Give us events that branch and bring people out to do content on a regular basis! I’ll be out there for it!
We don’t know exactly what their plans are for the open world content change, but I’m hoping. I’m tired of being shoved into other zones and dungeons. Let me enjoy events in the world that’s already there.
This is another huge announcement, and is coming before Evercold launches (good idea). While this doesn’t mean a whole lot for me, for folks who live on Dynamis and for raiders, this is a major important update.
From what I understand, Aether has been dubbed the official raiding data center. So, folks who want to raid feel the need to travel there to find raiding parties. And then, when those servers become congested, it’s a huge issue for raiders.
The folks on Dynamis have suffered from low populations that struggle to find parties for even the most common content. They feel the need to have to go to other data centers just to get a trial to pop and be able to move through the story. As people move off to find a faster queue, that perpetuates the population problem. And so it goes.
This should help both groups of people significantly. And it should help facilitate growth towards Dynamis, which really needs to happen.
Good news all around. We’ll have to see how it affects queue times.
Battle Modes – Reborn and Evolved
FFXIV is doing something extremely smart. They’re building out a new battle mode while leaving the old one in place.
The Reborn Mode is playing the game the way we always have. While the Evolved Mode is working towards consolidating buttons, and offering options to make jobs feel more defined and unique. Both modes will be available to switch back and forth into at any time, and sound like they will be more or less on the same page in terms of performance. They did admit that the Evolved Mode would have some perks over the Reborn, being slightly stronger.
Now. I love how they’re not just shoving everyone into a new battle system. They’ve seen in the past how that has worked out for other MMOs in the past (RuneScape, Star Wars Galaxies, etc.). Smart. Very smart.
Leave the old system in while testing out and polishing the new. I do feel like once the devs have earned confidence in the Evolved Mode, the game will probably leave behind the Reborn mode in the future. Already, the newest jobs are Evolved only.
As someone who plays Frontlines PVP, where the battle system was developed by the same person – Mr. Prime – I’m ready to jump in and relearn all my jobs with this Evolved Mode. Less buttons, for a person with small hands and short fingers, is wonderful! I’m generally able to PVP (and do a decent job at it) with keyboard alone while I can’t do that normally – I have to use a mouse to reach certain things.
If you’re curious about these modes, here’s the official dev panel we saw at Fanfest that detailed several jobs and the possible upcoming changes to them. Worth a watch!
I’m on board with this direction!
Evangelion Alliance Raid
So, the next theme of alliance raids in FFXIV is…
Yeah, didn’t see that one coming!
I’ve never watched Evangelion, so this didn’t lean one way or another for me. I guess I better start watching the anime to better understand it, huh?
Expanded Free Trial!
Another unexpected announcement – the free trial now goes all the way up to Shadowbringers. This was released live with patch 7.5, so it’s already out there to enjoy!
You can now play – for free – the story everyone’s been touting about. Find out who this Emet Selch guy is and why the players still rave for him as one of the best Final Fantasy antagonists ever.
Switch 2 Reveal
And finally, a surprise reveal from the S/E CEO that FFXIV will be coming to Switch 2.
We even got to see a bit of the Switch 2 gameplay during Fanfest. Interesting for people who want an on-the-go version of FFXIV that’s not the mobile version they’re developing.
I could see it working okay, but it wouldn’t be my choice of platforms, even if I owned a Switch 2 and the price of the systems weren’t getting jacked up by $50 in September. Not to mention having a second sub just for the Switch 2 version – thanks Nintendo.
Annnnyhow. That’s a thought for another post some other time.
Summary
All in all, an excellent keynote with a lot of exciting things coming our way. I’ve got plenty of questions, as I’m sure some others do. But, overall, this has given FFXIV a boost that it really needs amongst players both new and old.
I’ve seen so many folks who are expressing interest in the game again after seeing the announcements here. I know that the devs tend to hold back information until future Fanfests, but this time, NA got a chunky amount. I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of it!
Very much on board for the trip to the 4th!