A glitch in the new content patch of Final Fantasy XIV leaks the possible name of a completely new race that is expected to be playable with the expansion Shadowbringers. Several data miners confirm the find.
What does the glitch do? In the French version of FFXIV, Reddit user ValDCX made a strange discovery.
He discovered mentions of all races from the game in several NPC dialogues, including those that are not yet playable. This includes the Viera and a race that has not been announced yet: The so-called “Hrothgar”.
Other French FFXIV players joined the thread and posted images of the same glitch occurring with other NPCs.
How did the glitch occur? One of the possible reasons for the glitch might be the fact that in the French version of the MMORPG, the player character is often addressed by the name of their race instead of the usual neutral “Adventurer”.
The error likely arose because the code in the NPC dialogues could not be properly parsed. As a result, the NPCs mentioned the names of all races instead of just one appropriate name.
This text does not appear in other language versions of Final Fantasy XIV.
Data miners confirm the find: Several data miners subsequently joined the Reddit thread and confirmed the legitimacy of the screenshots.
They posted, for example, text passages that can be found in the code of FFXIV, which also mention the Hrothgar.
Furthermore, it would not be the first time that the game’s code contained unpublished information. The Samurai job was also discovered in the FFXIV files before it was announced at the Fan Fest in Frankfurt.
What exactly are Hrothgar? At this point, it is not possible to say how exactly the Hrothgar will look when they come into the game. There are only name mentions and no images of them.
However, players on Reddit speculate that it may be a lion-like race. Some suspect that the Hrothgar could resemble the Ronso from Final Fantasy X.
What other information could be drawn from the glitch? Another interesting detail that players discovered hinted at the possible genders of the two races Viera and Hrothgar.
In the French language, there is a clear distinction between men and women in addressing. Both for the Viera and the Hrothgar, masculine and feminine pronouns are used in the found texts.
Since the male Viera were not announced at the last Fan Festival in Paris, this is now an indication that the males may still come.
The glitch is supported by further leaks: Rumors about a new race, which is supposed to be playable along with the already known Viera from Shadowbringers, have been circulating in the FFXIV community for a long time.
The well-known leaker BluFever mentioned in his post about two new playable races: The Viera and a still-secret race without a name.
A significant portion of his leaks has been proven true so far. Therefore, the likelihood is high that the Hrothgar are the secret race that BluFever mentioned.
We will learn more about this at the Fan Festival in Japan in March.
