FF14 Evercold beholder gamle jobber for å unngå Star Wars Galaxies skjebne

Square Enix announced Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Evercold, at the recent fanfest, and director Naoki Yoshida used a Q&A attended by PC Gamer to explain a decision that has shaped the entire combat overhaul: the old job designs will remain playable through a "reborn" mode toggle, sitting alongside the new "evolved" redesigns. The reasoning traces back to Star Wars Galaxies and its New Game Enhancements update from 2005.

Evercold's job changes are not minor. Square Enix is streamlining the button bloat that has accumulated across years of expansions, and giving each job a distinct identity rather than the homogenized kit-style design FF14 has leaned on for most of its life. Demonstrations at the fanfest showed jobs with bespoke mechanics that have no precedent in the MMO. The Paladin's defensive cooldowns now allow counter-attacks if a player times them correctly, working closer to a parry than a damage-reduction window. The Dragoon was shown with an ultimate that sends it into the air, with developers experimenting with a 90% damage reduction during the leap.

These departures from FF14's standard design vocabulary are sweeping enough that maintaining two parallel sets of over two dozen jobs raises balance questions. Yoshida acknowledged the scope of the choice, framing it through the history of another MMO he played and admired.

"If you know about the game, I'm sure you know what happened to it when it did its thing."

— Naoki Yoshida

Star Wars Galaxies launched in 2003 with a profession system that supported non-standard MMO roles. Players could specialize as dancers, image designers, creature handlers, and similar specializations that other MMOs of the era did not accommodate. The 2005 New Game Enhancements compressed this into a smaller set of iconic Star Wars classes, simplified combat, and overhauled core systems. The update arrived shortly after a paid expansion, which the developer eventually offered refunds for. Subscribers left in droves, and Sony Online Entertainment shut Galaxies down in December 2011.

I read Yoshida's framing as a direct admission that even well-intentioned overhauls can hollow out the audience that built a game's culture. He returned to the comparison repeatedly during the Q&A.

"I actually really liked Star Wars Galaxies and its game design, but they—for the betterment of the gameplay experience, and they were doing it for the players—took an existing system, and they just changed it to something entirely new, and players did not take that very well. And I know people have been referring to it as a very tragic incident."

— Naoki Yoshida

Yoshida tied the reborn-mode decision back to FF14's own timeline. The game has run for fifteen years counting from the original 1.0 release, or thirteen counting from A Realm Reborn's relaunch. That stretch has produced a player base accustomed to specific rotations, button placements, and class fantasies that would be erased outright by a one-way migration to the evolved system.

"Counting from the original Final Fantasy 14, we've been around for 15 years—13 if we count from A Realm Reborn—we've been building this game together with players worldwide, and we've been on this journey together, and people have gotten so familiar and used to the system that we have established."

— Naoki Yoshida

"I knew that I didn't want to just suddenly remove what we've been used to. And that was my decision from the start."

— Naoki Yoshida

The reborn mode also has practical justification beyond player sentiment. FF14 keeps old raids and savage content available for years, and players still run those for clears, weapons, and glamour. A wholesale class rework would break the design assumptions baked into older fights, where boss timings and mechanic windows are tuned around current job kits. Maintaining the legacy versions sidesteps that problem without forcing Square Enix to re-tune years of legacy content.

"We need to make sure that, of course, we will develop evolved system, but then also let's properly address what we currently have as well. And so that is the direction that I had for them at the start."

— Naoki Yoshida

Yoshida pointed to two recent jobs as proof the design shift was already underway. Dawntrail introduced Viper and Pictomancer, both of which moved away from the heavily templated kits the game had relied on through Endwalker. He treats those releases as the bridge between the existing design language and the evolved philosophy planned for Evercold.

"I feel that we were already stepping into that Evolved mode, and the more recent job design seems to feel a lot more streamlined, and I feel like it's a very good design."

— Naoki Yoshida

"So I think with that knowledge that we've built—knowledge and experience and insight—we can start applying to the existing jobs that we've been accustomed to and have had for these many years."

— Naoki Yoshida

The remaining question is one of long-term cost. Square Enix will need to balance two distinct versions of every job across raid tiers, savage content, ultimates, and PvP modes for the foreseeable future. I think the SWG comparison addresses a narrower question than it might appear to. Yoshida endorses the evolved jobs themselves; his concern is what happens if the old versions disappear alongside them. Evercold's launch will test whether that distinction holds up under the weight of two parallel job systems running side by side.

Read also, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set to launch on October 6, 2026, after a Steam pre-order page surfaced the date ahead of any official announcement. Standard pre-orders include the base game, a player banner, and a livery. Deluxe buyers get three exclusive repulsorcraft, a digital art book, deluxe livery, three unique arcade events, and a separate deluxe banner, with physical deluxe copies including a steelbook. The Steam store page still lists only a vague 2026 window.