The Free Trial in Final Fantasy XIV is being massively expanded. The base game and the first expansion are available to players for free. We spoke about this with the head of the MMORPG.
Which content is free? Currently, interested players can experience the content of Final Fantasy XIV up to level 35. This includes the story, as well as the available classes and races from A Realm Reborn (ARR). This will change in a few weeks.
Starting from August 11th with the release of Patch 5.3, Free Trial users will have unrestricted access to all content of the base game A Realm Reborn and the first expansion Heavensward. This includes:
- All jobs and classes up to level 60, including the Heavensward jobs Astrologian, Dark Knight, and Machinist
- 6 playable races
- All story and side quests up to Patch 3.55 just before the add-on Stormblood
- Access to raids Bahamut, Crystal Tower, Void Ark, and Alexander
- Access to all 49 dungeons from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward
It is a very large amount of free content. In an exclusive interview, we asked the Director and Producer of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, what the reasons for this are and how the team wants to make the onboarding of new players smoother.
“Like a Japanese TV drama”
The suggestion to integrate a much larger part of FFXIV into the Free Trial came, according to Yoshida, more than a year ago. He himself had the idea, which was then discussed a lot within the team.
However, the marketing department expressed concern that the revenue from the starter pack would collapse. The pack currently only contains the base game A Realm Reborn and 30 days of gameplay.
The current level restriction is level 35. From a story perspective, it doesn’t really contribute to the story. Therefore, we wanted to extend it to 3.55 and motivate players to subscribe for Stormblood and beyond. That’s the reason I suggested it.
Director Yoshida
The Heavensward expansion is regarded by many active players as the best of FFXIV. Therefore, it is often read in forums and on reddit that new players are encouraged to quickly level through to the expansion, as that is when the really good part of the FFXIV story begins.
Therefore, the team decided to accept the loss of revenue. If it meant that new players could see more of the world and the story of the game and then subscribe, that would offset the losses.
It was at the time when the Shadowbringers expansion was released and praised by many. We often compare FFXIV to Japanese TV dramas, similar to Netflix. They often have many seasons and then offer Season 1 and 2 for free. But if you want to continue watching and see more story development, you are encouraged to subscribe.
So we decided on this approach. Our focus, our main philosophy so to speak, is that we want to convey the story to as many players as possible. We want them to immerse themselves in the world of FFXIV. The storyline of Heavensward was also highly praised and that was the reason why we included the expansion in the Free Trial.
It can also be seen as a message to the players. After “Season 1” (ARR) and “Season 2” (Heavensward) are already great, there will be even more content in future expansions.
Director Yoshida
Current owners of the starter pack will of course also gain access to Heavensward content.
Player protection as top priority
Even though the goal of the expanded Free Trial is to attract new players, the highest priority is still the protection of existing players.
Final Fantasy XIV has implemented many regulations and restrictions to prevent bots and RMTs (Real Money Traders / Gold Sellers) from exploiting the free trial version for their purposes. In FFXIV, several thousand accounts are banned weekly due to gold seller activities, at the release of Shadowbringers, it was even over 30,000.
Therefore, it is not possible for Free Trial accounts and characters, for example, to
- join free companies (guilds),
- sell items on the market board,
- send friend requests,
- and use other social features of the game.
This will not change with the extension of the trial version on August 11th.
The most important thing for us is the existing player base that has a subscription and that we want to protect. Therefore, we do not intend to make social features accessible to Free Trial players. That would cause many problems and reopen the gates for RMTs. It would endanger the community and the security within it.
We therefore do not intend to make free companies available for the Free Trial and this also applies to the market board.
Director Yoshida
Yoshida also does not believe that these restrictions would frustrate potential new players on their way to level 60 and the end of the trial version. According to the statistics available to the development team, new players typically complete their subscription about 7 days after starting their Free Trial. They rarely complete the trial version entirely before transitioning to the full version.
Even though we are opening the Heavensward expansion for the Free Trial now, we expect players to complete their subscription at a later point [than is currently the case]. But we don’t expect every Free Trial player to play through all the free content up to 3.55, level all jobs to 60, and then buy the game. We don’t believe that will happen.
When you know something is fun and you want to keep playing it, at some point you will make the decision to buy the game. Also because you want to have fun with the community and the complete experience that the full version offers. It is another reason why we opened these features for the Free Trial.
Director Yoshida
The introduction to the game will be “refined”
Along with the new extended trial version of FFXIV, on August 11th a major change will come to the MMORPG. The quests of the base game A Realm Reborn will be completely overhauled.
They will be shortened or completely removed, as they are often criticized in the community for their sluggishness and unnecessary fetch tasks. The statistics from the FFXIV team also confirm that many new players stop playing during these quest lines. This is supposed to change now.
To make the journey of new players smoother, the team has been working on the update for over a year, according to Yoshida.
The concept behind this is as follows: When we look back at the time when we created ARR, it was the time when we had to create 2.0 and work on the original FFXIV. The development team has grown since then, they and I myself have gained new knowledge and experience over time. We now see that the way the old quests were made was very inconsistent. The level of quality was all over the place.
Therefore, we wanted to go back and clean things up a bit. The goal is to refine the story and make it easier for new players to experience it. This is the big concept behind the refinement of A Realm Reborn.
Director Yoshida
The task here sounds simple at first. You take quests A, B, and C and remove the redundant quest B. But according to Yoshida, that was not as easy as it seems at first glance and took the team a lot of time.
In doing so, the important aspect of story had to be taken into account. Throughout the quests of ARR, characters are introduced and lore elements are introduced that play a significant role in the later expansions. Thus, the team had to be careful not to remove anything important at this point.
The bulk of the task was to look at the quests and the steps needed to complete them. We went through countless quests, I lost count, and looked at them step by step. And then we took out the unnecessary parts to make the players’ journey smoother.
We were so thorough that it took a year to finish the work. And we couldn’t just focus on that because we had to work on other content like the patches. So we had to find small windows of time during the patch updates in which we could work on it. It was a long process, but we did it.
Director Yoshida
However, consistency in the story was not the only difficulty. Final Fantasy XIV is a live game that is almost always online and actively played. This also means that there are currently players who are completing the revised quests.
This means for example,
- that player A has already completed a quest, but there are also other players.
- Player B is currently in the process of accepting this quest
- and player C is currently playing it while we are speaking here.
Therefore, the team had to carefully consider where to cut with the digital knife.
What’s next for Final Fantasy XIV?
The team is currently busy preparing for the release of the next major content patch 5.3, which, in addition to the expansion of the trial version and the overhaul of ARR, will include additional content:
- Completion of the Shadowbringers story
- Next 24-man raid of YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse named Puppet’s Bunker
- Next stage of the rebuilding of Ishgard, which will eventually become a new housing area of FFXIV
- The “Unreal” boss fights against former primals at elevated levels. The first of these will be Shiva
- New dungeon
- And more content
This patch will be the pinnacle of the Shadowbringers expansion and will conclude the story events in the first shard world. Accordingly, it will differ somewhat from the other .3 patches, Yoshida stated.
The reason for this is that the story of Shadowbringers revolves around the events in the first shard world. There are so many NPCs there that the Warrior of Light and their companions encounter. Although the Warrior of Light has no obstacles during his travels between the first shard world and the original world, that is not the case for other characters. They must return.
There will be many scenes of goodbyes, where you say farewell to the people of the first shard world, and we wanted to portray that very carefully. Therefore, the ending of Shadowbringers is slightly different from the previous expansions.
Director Yoshida
Fans of the story can therefore prepare for many long cutscenes, as this patch will contain more video material than most previous content updates (excluding expansions).
If you want to try the free trial version of Final Fantasy XIV starting August 11th, check out our beginner’s guide.
