FINAL FANTASY XIV: PATCH 7.25

Struggling to keep up in a modern MMO world

- By Harvey Randall

After my years playing Final Fantasy XIV—years I’ve spent becoming increasingly disgruntled by a patch cadence that feels like it’s moving through molasses, skewed content prioritization, and a seemingly inability to get with the times—I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Square Enix’s Creative Studio 3 is struggling to keep up. Not just when it comes to tempo, but when it comes to design.

But first, some context. Patch 7.25 released back in May, disembarking into some troubled waters. Dawntrail’s main scenario quest (MSQ) was ill-received, and in a game whose hype is kept afloat by an otherwise award-winning tale, that was a huge problem.

Gone was the hype machine of fans eagerly awaiting the next instalment—fanart and fanfiction and theorycrafting vanishing into thin air. What we were left with in the intervening patches was a game that, unless you were a hardcore raider, wasn’t really giving you much to do.

This was the case in Endwalker as well, mind—but I was still coming off the high of one of my favorite fantasy stories ever told reaching its conclusion. The rose-tinted glasses were losing their lustre.