Final Fantasy XIV‘s North American Fan Festival is currently underway in Anaheim, California, and with it has come some huge announcements about the MMORPG’s future. During the festival’s two-hour-long opening showcase, game director Naoki Yoshida (referred to as Yoshi-P by the community) announced that XIV’s next expansion, Evercold, is slated to release in January 2027, and brings with it two new classes and several major changes. But while Yoshida delivered a lot of exciting news on stage, the director had plenty to say about the game off stage, too.
Following the showcase, Yoshida met with members of the press to discuss both Evercold (which almost had a very different name, by the way) and Final Fantasy XIV as a whole. During this session, a reporter asked the director if he had ever considered creating a single-player Final Fantasy XIV–one more in line with the majority of the series’ numbered titles. With zero hesitation, Yoshida replied, “Yes.”
“There are still a lot of people out there who look at an online Final Fantasy and they say, ‘Well, an online Final Fantasy isn’t a real Final Fantasy,” Yoshida explained. He mentioned that, despite working on XIV for well over a decade now, even bringing just one more person to the world of Final Fantasy XIV remains an important mission to him. Naturally, this includes those who feel that XIV “isn’t a real Final Fantasy,” and would potentially jump in if it was a single-player experience.
