The new 24-player raid in Final Fantasy XIV has fulfilled one of the biggest wishes of MMORPG fans for collaborations with other games.
What is going on? At the Fan Festival in Paris, the party is on. During the keynotes providing information about the upcoming expansion Shadowbringers, director Naoki Yoshida announced a new collaboration.
Together with developers Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro, the FFXIV team will develop the next 24-player raid “YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse”.
Who are the two? Saito and Taro are primarily known to Square Enix fans through the games Nier: Gestalt / Replicant and Nier Automata. Especially Automata was a hit right at release and won several Video Game Awards.
Now there will be a whole raid in FFXIV spanning three major content patches within the Shadowbringers expansion.
What will the raid be about? According to director Yoshida, the story of the raid will revolve around the characters from Nier Automata.
The reason being the many endings of Nier Automata. The transition and story in FFXIV will therefore directly link to an ending. The story of the raid will be directly from Yoko Taro himself.
What does the community say? Social media and forums exploded as soon as it was announced that there would be such a large crossover with Nier Automata. The Reddit thread has now reached over 1800 upvotes and 650 comments.
Fans have wished for such a collaboration for a very long time, and there are even concept proposals for an event and mods that replicate the character 2B’s outfit from Automata.
But there was silence on the topic for a long time. It was repeatedly stated that a collaboration was not planned.
When will the raid come? The first part of the 24-player raid “YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse” will come during the Shadowbringers expansion, likely with Patch 5.1 in Fall 2019.
The Shadowbringers expansion releases on July 2, but pre-order customers will be able to play it in early access starting June 28.
In this sense: Glory to mankind!
You can watch the new trailer for Shadowbringers here:
Final Fantasy XIV: Watch the epic trailer for the Shadowbringers expansion
