Final Fantasy XIV Patch 1.22 and World Merge

[Raistlin]

This morning Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy XIV, issued an announcement regarding current ongoing changes and patch 1.22, which has a targeted release date of late April. He first discussed this month’s patch 1.21, saying how hard his team worked on developing the job quests, and that he had personally involved himself in writing some of the text. Two NPCs from the monk quests, Professor Erik and Widargelt, appear to have especially popular.

The bulk of the article is a list of changes that are ongoing or set for patch 1.22. This includes new quests, new enemies, and additions to the crafting systems. Also planned for patch 1.22 is the development of entirely new gameplay systems, such as the Hamlet defense, a cooperative system whereby players work to defend local areas. All in all, exciting changes are afoot.

In additional FFXIV news, the world merge is starting tomorrow, March 27. The link describes which worlds are merging and the new names. In some cases, two or more characters on the newly-minted worlds may have the same name, in which case the newer characters will be required to change their name by an in-game prompt after you log in. If your character has a non-original name, be ready!

The world merges have been described by the development team as a temporary measure to increase traffic on each world. Worlds may begin reappearing as player numbers increase, and some are planned to be added with the big relaunch, aka patch 2.0. The huge amount of changes combined with the hype for 2.0 will likely bring some new players to FFXIV, whether its their first or second time.

Lastly, patch 1.21a goes live today, which will continue some fixes of changes implemented by 1.21.

UPDATE: The patch notes for 1.21a can be found here.