Final Fantasy XIV concept artwork for Endwalker's Mare Lamentorum

[Update]: At long last, the Endwalker expansion has now been unleashed in full!

In a bit of a sudden announcement, Final Fantasy XIV developers have just revealed that the much anticipated Endwalker expansion has been delayed. Instead of launching on November 23rd as previously stated, Endwalker will now be arriving on December 7th, with the early access phase starting on December 3rd.

Similarly, the two previously scheduled patches have also been pushed back. As such, Patch 6.01 will be launching on December 21st alongside the Pandaemonium raid, while Patch 6.05 will release on January 4th and bring with it Savage difficulty for Pandaemonium, as well as new gear to collect.

"As I have mentioned previously in interviews and during live streams, Endwalker will be the largest expansion pack in the history of FFXIV," Final Fantasy XIV's director Naoki Yoshida explains. "However, as we neared the end of development and I played through everything—from quests to battle content and the like—I just couldn’t contain my desire to further improve Endwalker’s quality, specifically because this expansion pack marks the first major culmination of events in FFXIV so far."

"As a result, we remained firmly resolved to adjust down to the smallest nuances and ensure our writing covers even the finest points of the vast and intricate story that has spanned these past 11 years since the original FFXIV to ensure that everyone can fully enjoy their adventure in Endwalker. Unfortunately, the consequence of this was that we ended up in a situation where we cut into the time required for final quality assurance checks due to this time spent on additional improvements."

Needless to say, I am perfectly happy to wait a little while longer in order to get as polished of an experience as possible. That said, I can't imagine a mere two weeks will be enough to fix anything but a couple of the bigger problems, so I can only hope Endwalker's launch won't suffer because they feel like they need to rush things to not disappoint the playerbase, even after the delay.

What exactly the end result of this delay will be, I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Until then, you can read a little bit more about the whole announcement over at the Final Fantasy XIV website.