Final Fantasy 14 free trials reopening this week ahead of 10 years of updates

techradar.com:

Final Fantasy 14 Online will receive at least ten more years of development support that will introduce major graphical changes, gameplay tweaks, and reopen the game’s free trials from February 22.

Announced in the latest Letter from the Producer livestream, director and producer Naoki Yoshida outlined several changes coming to the MMORPG. This April, the 6.1 patch will expand the game’s Trust System to let you tackle more dungeons with NPCs rather than online players, low-level scenarios will be tweaked to better support solo play, and more quests and cosmetics will be added to the game.

Following patches will add more dungeons, cosmetics, a new dungeon type, the Myths of the Realm 24-man raid series, and the pastoral Island Sanctuary area that was first teased as part of the Endwalker expansion. The beginning of the new main scenario questline will also feature in the upcoming 6.1 patch.

Further down the line, patch 7.0 will introduce the game’s first major graphical overhaul, adding new lighting and shadow effects, animations, higher resolution textures, and more ambient effects. The game’s minimum system requirements are expected to go up, but shouldn’t be too demanding. 

Yoshida emphasized that it will improve on the game’s existing art style rather than pivot it to a more photorealistic direction. There’s no word yet as to when the graphics patch will drop, but we likely won't see it until 7.0, the game's next major expansion, which is currently expected to launch sometime in late 2023 or sometime in 2024.

Before then, the game’s free trial will reopen on February 22. Both the trial and sales of Final Fantasy XIV were temporarily suspended following a surge in players and server congestion around the launch of its