Final Fantasy XIV Free Trial to Include Stormblood Expansion

The annual Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest is currently taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada. During the opening keynote stream, it was announced that many changes are coming to the game. This includes allowing all users on the free trial to gain access to Stormblood, the second expansion for the MMORPG. The expansion pack lets such players access two additional DPS jobs, Samurai and Red Mage. It also allows all jobs - combat, crafting, and gathering - to be leveled to a new cap of 70. Players will need to complete all of the Heavenward expansion to move on to Stormblood.

This comes as little surprise, since Stormblood was previously free for full subscribers in March 2023. The expansion was also included to owners of either the Shadowbringers or Endwalker expansion, as narrative completion of older stories is needed to play the latest content. It is likely that with the growing playerbase, Square Enix aims to bolster the amount of consecutive active players. This can both keep paying customers busy and incentive the free trail users to purchase the full game.

 

The free trial rollout is scheduled to coincide with the release of patch 6.5, the final update for Endwalker. No release date has been confirmed, but given past release schedules it will likely arrive during September or October 2023. Additionally, the inclusion of Stormblood will come alongside the beta test for the Xbox Series versions of Final Fantasy XIV. As it will not be available for retail yet, it is unknown when the free trial will come to that platform.      

Kurtis Seid (@KurtisSeid)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed