FFXIV's New Jobs Need Its New Combat Mode. Evercold Slips to February 23, and the Crossbow Job Zephyr Skips the Old Rotations Entirely.

What Happened

Evercold slipped about three weeks to February 23, 2027, and both of its new jobs only work in the new Evolved combat mode.

Final Fantasy XIV is Square Enix's subscription MMO, and its two newest jobs will not use the combat its players have run for over a decade. Naoki Yoshida, the game's producer and director, confirmed it at the Fan Festival 2026 keynote in Tokyo on October 30, Pacific time, and moved the expansion back about three weeks in the same talk.

The delay

• New launch date. Evercold, the game's next expansion, now launches February 23, 2027. It was announced in April at Fan Festival Anaheim with a January 2027 window.
• Early access. Pre-order early access starts February 19, 2027, a date the official site still calls tentative.
• Pre-orders. Pre-orders open worldwide on November 4, 2026.
• An apology. Yoshida apologised on stage for the slip and gave no detailed reason beyond the amount of work and bug fixing left.

Zephyr, the second new job

• Ranged physical DPS. Zephyr is a physical ranged damage job that fires a crossbow alongside a falcon-like familiar called a Nephele.
• A pet job. Yoshida called it "a pet job, which is a rare occurrence" for the game.
• How to unlock. Zephyr unlocks from a quest in New Gridania, one of the game's starting cities, once another combat job reaches level 90.
• One mode only. Zephyr and Bastion, the expansion's other new job, a tank, both run only in Evolved Mode, the reworked battle system.
• Higher cap. The level cap rises from 100 to 110.

Two combat modes

• Two modes. The game will offer two battle modes: Evolved Mode, built from scratch, and Reborn Mode, the current combat kept as it is.
• Fewer buttons. Evolved Mode folds some actions into single buttons and leans on what makes each job stand out.
• Old rotations stay. Reborn Mode keeps today's combat but cannot use Zephyr or Bastion.
• Every job built. Yoshida said Evolved Mode is now in place for every supported job, and the team is tuning actions, abilities and recast times.
• Switching modes. Players switch modes the same way they change jobs, according to the translated stream.
• A combat stream. Before launch, the developer in charge of Evolved Mode will walk through each job's changes on a battle livestream.

Other systems

• Fierce raids. Fierce is a new raid difficulty that sits between normal and Savage, the game's hardest regular raid tier.
• Shorter alliance raids. Each floor of an alliance raid, the game's large multi-party raid format, is now split into two fights.
• Dungeon balancing. Dungeons gain a system called Auto Content Balancing.
• Shared item level. Item Level Link, a new gear system, copies the average item level one max-level job has recorded onto another job that is also at max level.
• No season pass. Yoshida repeated that the game will not sell a season pass and pointed to its monthly subscription.

The weekly loot and zone changes from the same expansion are in our Evercold weeklies breakdown.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Final Fantasy XIV is cutting buttons per job and locking its new jobs to the slimmer mode, the open question for how the Riot MMO's combat reads.

• The combat hire. Brian Holinka, who ran World of Warcraft's PvP design for five years and its combat design for five more, joined the Riot MMO as a principal game designer on June 1.
• Kit size. A League of Legends champion carries four abilities and a passive, which is closer to Evolved Mode's target than to a classic MMO hotbar.
• No veterans yet. FFXIV keeps Reborn Mode so long-time players keep their rotations. A new MMO has no such players and can launch with one system.
• Cheaper alts. Item Level Link and Auto Content Balancing lower the cost of playing a second job, which matters in any MMO that lets players swap roles.
• Scope unrevealed. Riot has shown nothing of the MMO's combat, class count or business model. The only confirmed fact is that it is set in Runeterra.

Our read. It took FFXIV a decade of expansions to need a second combat system, and it kept the old one alive beside it. A Riot MMO built from League-sized kits starts near where Square Enix is now heading. The test for Holinka's team is whether it stays there five expansions in.

The delay is the familiar part. Riot's MMO lead called building one a monumental undertaking the day he took the job, and an established team with a working game still needed three more weeks.

What to Watch

Three dated beats between now and launch.

Your Take

Reported from Game Rant and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.