Square Enix Delays Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Launch By Two Weeks

We have a bit of bad news for you gang, not too bad, but still, not good if you’ve been waiting for Endwalker to drop. During tonight’s Live Letter (Friday, Nov. 4, for those of you reading this at a later time.) Yoshi-P announced that they’d be delaying the launch of Endwalker by two weeks. Instead of launching on November 23 with Early Access Starting on November 19, the expansion will now launch on December 7 with early access on December 3.

According to Yoshi-P’s statements, a big reason for this delay is that the ongoing server congestion hindered master QA and they want to spend more time on QA and testing stability to make sure it’s as good as it can be. He also noted that they feel two weeks is the right amount of time, “no more or less”.

During the delay announcement, Yoshi-P did state that the delay was for a “very selfish reason”. As Endwalker is the end of the Hydaelyn saga, and the culmination of everything with them tying up all the loose ends and making sure there’s nothing left out there, the director in him “wants [it] to be done right”. He couldn’t let it come out until then and the call was made last Friday to delay the launch.

If you’re wondering how he’s feeling about all of this, it should probably be noted that Yoshi-P took the blame for the delay completely on himself (rather than trying to lay it at the feet anyone else) and was in tears during the announcement. He knows that players have taken time off and prepared for the expansion launch and the team even considered rolling things out in smaller bits and patching as they went along. Unfortunately, that’s just not how the game is built and it probably wouldn’t have been nice for the players. The priority is simply to make sure what we get is the best it can be.

Also of note is that they don’t appear to be crunching to get this done, as making sure staff has time off for the upcoming holidays has also been taken into consideration.

So, with all that said, here’s the new schedule.

• December 3 – Early Access
• December 7 – Regular Launch
• December 21 – 6.01 (Pandaemonium Normal Raid)
• January 4, 2022 – 6.05 (Pandaemonium Savage, New Gear, New Tomestones

You did get a new trailer, though! An amazing one!