“Final Fantasy XIV: End of Aria” has been postponed from the previously announced November 23 release to December, Square Enix announced.
Producer and director Naoki Yoshida explained the reasons for this delay:
「[…]As we approached the end of development, I played everything — from missions to combat content, and so on — I couldn’t restrain my desire to further improve the quality of “Aria’s End”, especially because this expansion marked the ” The first major climax of the events in FFXIV so far. Even if we skip “The End of Aria” and do not watch it, the story of “FFXIV” will last a long time, and we hope to provide more enjoyable experiences in the game. However, it is precisely because of the end of the first major legend in “The End of Aria”, I feel that our team needs to push itself to the “limit” I envisioned.
Therefore, we remain firmly determined to adjust to the smallest nuances and make sure that our writing covers the most important points in the huge and complex story spanning the first 11 years of “FFXIV” to ensure that everyone can fully enjoy the adventure. Unfortunately, as a result of this, we ended up in a situation where we were compressed to the time required for the final quality assurance check due to the time spent on other improvements.
At this rate, if the release is carried out without ensuring the “stability” as a form of quality, the risk will be greater. Therefore, I decided to postpone the release at this time. Since we also expect a lot of congestion in all game worlds, I feel that even in this regard, it is not right to release expansions without sufficient “stability”. I’m really sorry. “
In short, the postponement can be attributed to Yoshida and the team’s desire to make everything perfect, so they need extra time to polish each part of “Aria’s End”, which ultimately requires more time to complete. Work.
You can see the new schedule below:
Official release: Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Early access begins: Friday, December 3rd, 2021
Patch 6.01 is expected to be released: Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Patch 6.05 Expected release date: Tuesday, January 4, 2022