Yoshida Says Despite Final Fantasy 14’s Evercold’s Theme, The Team Is “Not Really Developing Any Kind Of Snowy Or Icy Areas”

Final Fantasy 14’s Naoki Yoshida Officially Confirms “Two Very Big Overhauls For Housing” Published Jul 26, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT Meg is an Executive Editor and Technical Lead for TheGamer, and has been working within the gaming industry since 2014. She was shortlisted as a finalist for the GameHers Journalist of the Year award in 2022 and was a juror for the BAFTA Games Awards 2026. Some of the games and genres that Meg is an expert in include RPGs, point-and-clicks, puzzle games, and life sims. She has a particular fondness for Yakuza/Like a Dragon and Final Fantasy, especially Final Fantasy 14 (for which she used to run a weekly community column). Sign in to your TheGamer account Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival kicked off day one in Berlin this weekend with a nearly three-hour-long keynote from producer and director Naoki Yoshida that was jam-packed with information about upcoming expansion Evercold and other future content coming to the beloved MMORPG. We had juicy reveals, such as the new Bastion job being unveiled, peeks at new Evercold areas and characters, a Final Fantasy 7 crossover, branching main scenario quests with auto-balancing, further character customisation options, and much more. Warriors of Light are eating well. During a Q&A session with the press at the end of the first day, in response to being asked about the long keynote, Yoshida stated, “I do think myself as well that an almost three-hour keynote is a little bit too long. I promise you, moving forward, I will be more attentive with my timekeeping. But I think it's all thanks to all of you. The cheers from you, all of the players, that really helped me and gave me that drive to finish the presentation.” Yoshida believes part of the reason why FF14 has such a steadfast fanbase that is more than happy to sit through nearly three hours of new information about their favourite game is the relationship he’s built up with the community over the past decade. Explaining that when he joined the team, the “situation around Square Enix back at that time was not so good” and he remembers that the press told him that Square Enix felt like a “secretive company” that didn’t tell people much, and they told him he was the first director that “actually says so much and provides so much information”. He continues: “It's really important to be honest and upfront. If we failed, we should explain why we failed. If we decided to do something and we decided it's necessary, we should explain why it's necessary and also how we would achieve it. If we get requests which we cannot address, then we should also explain the reasons behind that as well. So I thought it's very important to be upfront and be completely honest about why we do the things we do, and I've been doing this right for 16 years.” Yoshida says he doesn’t consider the development team and playerbase as two separate entities, but rather “we are all together as one community” and that the “process of being transparent and engaging together in order to gain a level of mutual understanding is what's helped contribute to all of us cultivating this fan base together, whether it be something really minor about 14, or whether it's a major piece of content. Whenever there is something that needs to be talked about, I love for us to talk about [it] together, and for us to get excited together as we work together on Final Fantasy 14.” On Bastion And Evercold’s New Areas Bastion is a new job role coming to Final Fantasy 14 as part of Evercold, with Yoshida confirming no previous game in the series inspired it like so many other past additions. However, it’s not exactly new, as with hindsight (and Yoshida teasing the connection with his t-shirt at the North American Fan Fest), we know that the A Realm Reborn boss Rhitahtyn Arvina has occupied the Bastion class all this time; we just didn’t have the label. The Bastion offers a good combination of long and close-range attacks, with Yoshida highlighting that “one of the key appeal points about Bastion is that in its toolkit it does have a good recovery and guard ability as well”. He goes on to say that “as a main tank, you can instantly apply those effects to party members. But the key thing about Bastion is that you can also do it at a timing of your liking. You can look to what the boss is going to do, and based on its timeline, you can decide when would be the most optimal time to apply that recovery or guarding ability for your party members. I think that's a key point.” During the keynote, Yoshida referred to the Bastion as a “main tank”, but during the Q&A he clarified further, “In Reborn mode, there is no clear distinction between main tank and off tank. That clear difference is only applied in Evolved mode.” When asked if it was time for Warriors of Light to learn to off tank with a cheeky bit of sarcasm, Yoshida groaned and said the question brought “a little bit pain to my heart”. The main tank has the responsibility of holding boss aggro and facing the enemy away from the group, while the off tank supports with party mitigation and picking up secondary adds, as well as provoking during tank swaps. Yoshida says he often receives similar feedback from Dark Knights, and that “you have to decide between yourselves who's going to be in the main tank and off tank. And we are designing it so that it is fun to play as an off tank.” You heard it, people: Dad says we have to play nice together. While Evercold is taking us to the Fourth, a world consumed by ice, surprisingly, Yoshida tells us that despite the theme and expectation of imagery of ice and snow, “we're not really developing any kind of snowy or icy areas.” As we saw from the keynote yesterday, the inhabitants of the Fourth have abandoned the land and taken to the skies in great airships, and so it’s aboard these that we’ll spend much of our time. These ships have varied environments, from vibrant green landscapes aboard Naglfar the Realmship of Water, to foundries and rivers of molten metal aboard Hhringhorni, the realmship of fire. Yoshida explains that whenever the team is approaching a new expansion and developing new areas, they always want to “create something which all of our players have never been before, something that they wouldn't even imagine, and we want to think of areas which we ourselves haven't really experienced or seen before either…This time around, we've been looking to Norse mythology and Nordic culture as a source of inspiration, and really looking around what sort of old mythology there is that we can draw from, and we've melded that with a fantasy aesthetic.” Two “Very Big” Housing Overhauls Are On The Way When asked about whether the FF14 housing system will be modernised, Yoshida gets to the heart of the question: “I get the feeling what you really want to ask is, WoW has come up with this amazing housing system. How about FF14?” He tells us that the team have “immense respect” for the World of Warcraft team, and that it was a “great honour” that the WoW team “said specifically that they looked to FF14 and incorporated things which they wanted to surpass us”. After going hands-on with WoW’s housing system, Yoshida said it’s “really amazing” and “a good source of research”, before teasing us with what’s in store for FF14. “I can't say exactly when it will happen, but what I can say is that for the Patch 8. X series, we are planning two very big overhauls for housing.” The first update will focus on the user interface, as Yoshida says he appreciates that the UI is currently “quite technical” and “not very accessible” for all players, so the team wants to make it more accessible for casual players so they can easily create elaborate housing. He was more secretive about the second overhaul: “I'm not able to provide any details right now, but I think probably you will be much happier to hear what it is compared to the UI update.” There's a good chance the second overhaul will be implemented before the UI update, and we were promised further details in the near future. During the keynote yesterday, Yoshida also announced that players would be able to customise their characters more, allowing for things such as the removal of Miqo’te warpaint, which is a complete 180 from the team’s previous stance. “As a game developer, I think it's our responsibility to come up with the law, the world, and the rules of the game, and then to provide that to the players. Because of that, I think from a creative perspective, we are really particular about how we want that world to be, and we are really honest about how we want that world to be.” Though Yoshida understands the player requests to turn off lore-dictated elements, he uses the warpaint as an example: “The Miqo’te is a tribe, a hunter tribe, and a warring tribe. So it's only natural that they would have their warring makeup, and previously I said that we would not remove that war makeup from the Miqo’te.” Yoshida explains, “I refused because I said these are the rules of the world that we provided, and this is the law behind the race. And it was for this reason why previously we had not allowed. But when it comes to this law and being very particular about the law, I thought to myself that this can also be considered an aspect of role play, and in that regard, I kind of upgraded my own mindset or my approach to it.” With the announcement that you will be able to switch off the warpaint, Yoshida states he personally would not turn it off because he loves the lore of FF14, but when it “comes to the question of following that lore and being really loyal to that lore, I think it's not really a question of good or bad. But now I began to think that it's more a question of how particular you are about that aspect, and that's more tied into role-playing.” Even if only one player is unable to play the way they want because of those restrictions, Yoshida realised it wasn’t the direction he wanted to take, and ultimately he wants “to give the choice to players”. He also told us that if players are like him and “really want to be particular about how their Warrior of Light is represented, then they can just do the same as me and make sure that the display is switched on. We want to provide that choice to the players, and we don't want to force the players down any particular route.” Bold New Steps When it comes to taking bold new steps for FF14, Yoshida tells us that for the two recently announced raids, the Neon Genesis Evangelion Ghosts of Desire crossover and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Beyond the Lifestream crossover, “we've placed a lot of importance on the story, and we've really worked hard to ensure that the story will be engaging for the players. But also, we've equally put a lot of attention and effort into the boss battles as well”. The Evangelion raid series has been “a very big challenge” in particular because “Evangelion has such a different world; we've really approached how to fuse these two completely different worlds together and form a cohesive story with it. And I think this is a very big challenge that we've been taking on. We are working very closely with Khara Inc., and it's been a lot of fun working together with them.” Yoshida was the one to approach the Final Fantasy 7 Remake team about a possible collaboration, and tells us that the “timing would be really important” as he didn’t want to “distract the Final Fantasy 7 Remake team from their hard work”. And speaking of exciting new things, during the keynote, Yoshida also announced a new type of content, tentatively titled World Raids, that will add more exploratory experiences to public fields, and this has been another big challenge for the team. During the Q&A, Yoshida announced that the person in charge of the development of this content is none other than Mr. Ozma (Masaki Nakagawa), who also worked on Beastmaster and who created Eureka. On Making FF14 More Accessible For New Players With every expansion that launches, it is adding on to an already mammoth adventure and ultimately making it more daunting for new players to dip their toes into FF14 when they’re committing to a 300+ hour MMORPG. It’s a concern that Yoshida hears often, but the team is working on solutions for it already. “We are considering two things to address this. The first one is something that we will carry out at Evercold release timing or before Evercold. The second one involves a system, but we are currently reviewing the possibility of this. Right now, we're still considering feasibility and addressing the question about whether or not we would be able to introduce the system. For these things that I'm talking about, there's a non-zero possibility of us being able to implement it for 8.0. “I had previously said that I do want players to enjoy the story, so I would like them to have a fresh experience right from A Realm Reborn. But now that we are at this point, we have begun thinking about accommodating these kinds of requests, and I think from the two things that I have hinted at here, one of them, at least, you might be able to know more about at the JP Fan Fest. But I think you can think positively about it.” The memes are already flooding out of Fan Festival, not only from the recent announcements but also hilarious moments like the “security guard” (read: muscly PR guy) dragging Soken away before he could reveal more Evercold sound bites. The fandom will always find the most unlikely things to latch onto and fall in love with, and one prime example of that is Chort. With a laugh, Yoshida tells us that he is glad that Chort was so well received, but adds, “honestly speaking, I just couldn't really understand what is the appeal point of Chort.” He’s seen all the memes, and he knows the community loves him, but rather than him telling us his thoughts on Chort, Yoshida is interested to know why we love Chort so much. Yoshida says that when the player community picks something up like this and makes memes, it’s “really great” for the team to see “If people in the community also find some unexpected sense or point of appeal in any content that we produce moving forward, do make your voices heard because the development team is looking at all of the responses on social media, and we very much do enjoy looking at them. And we do have big smirks on our faces when things like this happen.” Remember that when the next expansion comes out and we’re all thirsting over some new character on social media. Cough. Bakool Ja Ja. Cough. I personally can’t wait to see the continued flood of excitement and memes as we learn more about Evercold; roll on Japanese Fan Fest! Released August 27, 2013 ESRB Teen / Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact Developer(s) Square Enix Publisher(s) Square Enix Engine Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it's a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine. Genre(s) MMORPG, Adventure, Open-World