Source: Square Enix. Verified against multiple sources; datamines and reports are labelled as such, not stated as fact.
What Square Enix Revealed
A new tank that only works in the new combat system, and 21 old jobs that get to pick.
Final Fantasy XIV is about to run two combat systems side by side, because it could not bring itself to replace one. That is the story sitting under the job reveal, and it is the part that should interest anyone building an MMO right now.
Game director Naoki Yoshida revealed the Bastion at the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Berlin on July 25, 2026, the first of two new jobs in the Evercold expansion. It is a main tank that fights with a pair of greatshields called skyltborg, which transform between clawed melee weapons and triple-barreled cannons, and it carries curative boons for allies on top of the usual offensive and defensive kit. Players start it at level 90.
The structural change landed in the same keynote. For the game’s 21 existing jobs, Evercold introduces a fork: Reborn Mode keeps the current combat system exactly as it is, and Evolved Mode reworks rotations so they need fewer inputs. Taking Evolved Mode costs nothing, since it requires no new gear and no new levels.
The Bastion does not get that choice. It ships in Evolved Mode only, with no Reborn option, and every job added from Evercold onward will be Evolved Mode only too. The expansion also raises the level cap from 100 to 110, a number the official FFXIV account confirmed back at the April 2026 Fan Festival.
Square Enix is splitting the reveal across three Fan Festivals, so the second new job, a physical ranged DPS, has not been shown. Tokyo follows on October 31 and November 1, 2026. Evercold launches January 2027 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, Windows, Mac and Steam.
The Details
Everything Square Enix put on the record in Berlin, plus the one name it has not settled.
April 2026
The cap is set
The official FFXIV account confirms Evercold takes the level cap to 110.
June 1, 2026
Riot hires Holinka
World of Warcraft’s former lead combat designer joins the Riot MMO as a Principal Game Designer.
July 25, 2026
Berlin: the Bastion
The gun-shield tank is revealed, Evolved Mode only.
Oct 31
Fan Festival Tokyo
The second new job, a physical ranged DPS, is still unshown.
January 2027
Evercold launches
Both combat systems go live at once.
- The Bastion was revealed July 25, 2026 at the FFXIV Fan Festival in Berlin, which runs July 25-26.
- It is a main tank wielding paired greatshields called skyltborg that shift between clawed melee form and triple-barreled cannons.
- The Bastion is available in Evolved Mode only, with no Reborn Mode option.
- Players begin the job at level 90.
- Evercold's 21 existing jobs get a choice: Reborn Mode keeps the current combat system, Evolved Mode reworks rotations to need fewer inputs.
- Evolved Mode requires no new gear or levels, and all jobs added from Evercold onward will be Evolved Mode only.
- Evercold launches January 2027 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, Windows, Mac and Steam.
- The level cap rises from 100 to 110 (confirmed by the official FFXIV account back at the April 2026 Fan Festival).
- Square Enix is splitting the reveal across three Fan Festivals; Tokyo follows October 31 and November 1, 2026, and the second new job, a physical ranged DPS, is still unshown.
- Yoshida said of Evercold: 'Again, no season passes, no additional fees.'
- Riot hired former WoW lead combat designer Brian Holinka as Principal Game Designer on its MMO, starting June 1, 2026.
- Outlets reported the new hub city under two different transliterations, Fargarth and Falgarthr, so the settled English name is not yet clear.
What This Means for the Riot MMO
Riot has one combat system to ship and nobody to grandfather. FFXIV just priced the other path.
Button count is a launch-day commitment, not a tuning knob. FFXIV is the biggest traditional hotbar MMO on the market, and it has just conceded that its combat asks for too many inputs. Then it found out it could not simply fix that: thirteen years of muscle memory meant the old system had to survive as Reborn Mode next to the new one.
The Bastion is where the hedge ends. A brand-new job has no legacy players to protect, so it ships in the new system only, and so does everything after it. That is how you move a playerbase without confiscating anything, and it is worth filing away in case Riot ever has to rework combat after launch.
Button count is a launch-day commitment, not a tuning knob.
Riot’s MMO has no shipped rotations and nobody to grandfather. It also has somebody who has run this problem from the other end: Riot hired Brian Holinka, World of Warcraft’s former lead combat designer, as a Principal Game Designer on the MMO starting June 1, 2026. The button-count question is live on that team now, not hypothetical, and FFXIV is showing what the bill looks like when you answer it thirteen years late.
The catch is that nobody outside Riot has seen a second of it. A rival action MMO has already broken its warrior down to the parry timing while Riot’s has not shown a single class, and the older complaint that every MMO since WoW feels the same is exactly the rut a fresh combat system gets one shot at climbing out of.
- FFXIV needed an entire parallel combat mode to walk its button count back. That is what the decision costs once players own it.
- Riot only has to ship one combat system. Every dual-mode MMO pays for the second one forever in balance and QA.
- A new job that exists only in the new system is how you migrate a playerbase without forcing a conversion, worth remembering if Riot ever reworks combat post-launch.
- League has already trained a large audience to read champion kits on sight, which is a readability head start FFXIV is now engineering backwards.
- Yoshida promised Evercold brings no season passes and no additional fees. That is a subscription MMO drawing a line in public while Riot has never put a business model for its MMO on the record at all.
| Final Fantasy XIV | The Riot MMO | |
|---|---|---|
| Combat systems | Two from Evercold on: Reborn Mode and Evolved Mode | Not revealed |
| Rotations to protect | 21 jobs, thirteen years of muscle memory | None. No combat has shipped. |
| Newest class | The Bastion, Evolved Mode only, starts at level 90 | Not revealed |
| Level cap | Rising from 100 to 110 | Not revealed |
| When the button-count call gets made | After launch, thirteen years in | Before launch, in development now |
| How it is sold | Subscription. Yoshida: no season passes, no additional fees | Not revealed |
The two companies are more tangled than a straight comparison suggests: FFXIV’s mobile version died after 15 months, and Riot’s parent company is the one that killed it.
Riot’s head start here is not theoretical. League players read champion kits on sight, and they have been doing it for years: 
Ahri charms you and pulls, 
Blitzcrank throws the hand, 
Warwick smells the low-health target and goes.
Those kits carry their geography too. 
Yasuo is Ionia before he draws a blade, 
Azir is Shurima the moment the sand moves. Readability and place arrive together, which is the half FFXIV is now engineering backwards into a thirteen-year-old system.
One caution about the map below, because it gets misread constantly. The only confirmed fact about Riot’s MMO is that it is set in Runeterra. Which regions it opens in, how much of the world is playable, what era it takes place in, what it runs on and how it is sold are all unrevealed. The map and the crests are the fiction Riot draws on, browsable in the Atlas, not a starting zone.
For the argument in motion, Riot’s own A New Dawn cinematic is still the cleanest version of it. It is a single fight where you can name what everyone is doing from one frame, no tooltip and no twelve-slot bar.
What To Watch
Two dated beats left on the Evercold calendar, and the coverage this piece argues with.
Your Take
Should Riot's MMO build combat around a short, League-style ability set instead of a full MMO hotbar?
Reported from Square Enix and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.
