FFXIV Info - Fan Site and Database

Today, Square Enix posted a new FFXIV: ARR article on the Lodestone. Read below for all the information, taken from the Lodestone.

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We’re pleased to announce that FINAL FANTASY XIV: Heavensward, our first expansion, will be released on Tuesday, June 23, 2015! We’ll also be simultaneously starting service for the Mac OS version!

And behold the adventures that await beyond the gates of Ishgard in FINAL FANTASY XIV—A Tour of the North.

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This weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Square Enix made some big announcements regarding FFXIV: Heavensward. We learned that the expansion will be released worldwide on June 23rd 2015. There will be three versions of the expansion available, while pre-ordering any of them will provide early access from June 19th 2015. The three versions are as follows:

Collector’s Edition: In-game items + physical items (including a dragon statue).
Standard Edition: A cheaper version without the above perks.
Combo Version: This includes FFXIV: ARR plus the expansion.

There is also a downloadable version of the above, but the downloadable collector’s edition does not come with the physical items. As such the price is lower.

The prices have yet to be announced but with pre-order available on March 16th we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Additionally there will be a new benchmark tool released in April that will allow you to see how your PC performs with the game. A Mac version of the game is also scheduled to be released with Heavensward.

June 23rd may seem quite a while off for those who were hoping for an April or May release date but Naoki Yoshida (the game’s producer and director) has decided extra time was needed for polishing the large amount of content coming in Heavensward. Before then we can look forward to patch 2.55 at the end of March.

Heavensward – also known as 3.0, is said to contain as much content as the original A Realm Reborn (2.0) release in 2013. While there will be less areas included the new areas are said to be larger than existing areas and it works out at roughly the same land area. To get around we will see the introduction of flying mounts for use in new areas. For now we cannot use these in existing areas because the maps weren’t designed with them in mind but in the future they may look into solving this.

We will see three new jobs in the expansion – Astrologian (Healer), Dark Knight (Tank) and Machinist (DPS). These will not have a base class and you must have an existing class at level 30 in order to unlock them. There is some confusion as to whether or not the jobs will begin at level 30 or whether you level up from 1 like existing classes.

For existing jobs we will certainly see some changes in how they play because the level cap is being raised to 60 and we will have new abilities for each job. The new content will be designed with these new abilities in mind, so what worked as your best rotations in ARR may not necessarily be the best in Heavensward. New job quests and artifact armour are also expected.

Square Enix released a new trailer showing off the new areas, flying mounts and more: