FINAL FANTASY XIV Online News

If you're planning on playing some Final Fantasy XIV this evening, you'll want to get in early. FFXIV is going down for five hours of maintenance tonight in order to prep the way for patch 6.05 release time. It's a pretty minor patch in terms of new content, but it will bring us access to the savage tier of the Pandeamonium raid, a new treasure hunt instance, and new gear to collect.

FFXIV goes down for maintenance at 9pm PST on January 3, or 12am EST / 5am GMT on January 4. Servers will remain down for five hours, and you'll be able to log back in for the new patch starting at 2am PST / 5am EST / 10am GMT. The Lodestone site will also go down shortly after the game servers, returning alongside FFXIV itself.

Besides the savage version of Pandaemonium, patch 6.05 will also feature the Excitatron 6000 treasure hunt instance, new Allagan tomestones to collect, and new gear. In past expansion cycles, x.05 patch releases have also typically included an array of job balance changes, so it's likely we'll see the same here.

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FFXIV's Heavensturn event returns for the new year - here's when and where

Right now Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is so popular you can’t buy it anymore. To prevent overcrowding and crashing servers, Square Enix have had to halt free trials and new sales to keep the game stable after an unprecedented surge in popularity this summer. Between that and the global shortage of materials to add more servers, it may be quite some time until new players are able to experience it. If you have an active subscription and manage to brave the long queues however, you’re one of the lucky few who get to experience something truly special. For everyone else: hang in there, it will be worth the wait.

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There is now an official manga featuring Final Fantasy XIV characters as anime high schoolers. As promised, it's here in time for Christmas, but you might have a difficult time reading it if you're not fluent in Japanese. Luckily, some fans are already breaking down the plot so we English-speakers can enjoy a little taste.

The manga features Alisae and Alphinaud as its principal characters, as broken down in Aitai Kimochi's explainer blog. They're first-years living in a shared house (called, naturally, the Rising Stones) with Y'shtola, Thancred, and Urianger. The first chapter has the twins running late for school and, naturally, your typical high school manga hijinks ensue.

Zenos pops in as the sneering popular kid, flanked by flunkies Asahi and Yotsuyu. The chapter-ending cliffhanger has Principal Tataru popping in to challenge the students of light and darkness to gather points in various school activities. That starts, as you might expect, with a sports festival. You can get a much more detailed breakdown at the link above.

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FFXIV's Heavensturn event returns for the new year - here's when and where

Final Fantasy XIV patch fixes low-poly grapes, much to the dismay of fans

FFXIV Endwalker Raid release time - Pandaemonium and v6.01 drops soon

It's been a tough month for Final Fantasy XIV fans. While the Endwalker expansion has launched to universal praise, the ensuing server congestion has led to digital sales and the much-memed-upon free trial being temporarily pulled. Not long after one meme fell, though, has another now joined it: Square Enix has fixed Endwalker's low-poly grapes.

In FFXIV's 6.01 patch notes, the developer explains that Labyrinthos' grapes were looking a tad blocky as the polygon count was lowered to alleviate system memory usage in the area. While that's certainly appreciated, it meant that Labyrinthos' grapes didn't look quite as nice as those found in the Crystarium. That just won't do, you see, so Square Enix has bought graphical parity to both sets of fruit.

It's been a tough one for the community. The purple slab of grape became a beloved community meme for both those who managed to get into Endwalker and others who were scouring Reddit while sitting in the queue. One meme imagines the low-poly grapes as Hydaelyn's crystal form, whereas another imagines it as an orb truly worth pondering. To think, you might've even be able to taste the low-poly count if things hadn't changed.

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RELATED LINKS:

FFXIV's Heavensturn event returns for the new year - here's when and where

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FFXIV Endwalker Raid release time - Pandaemonium and v6.01 drops soon

Final Fantasy XIV players haven’t had it easy these last few weeks. The sheer success of its Endwalker expansion resulted in lengthy login queues and server errors. It’s become so popular that Square Enix have temporarily stopped selling the game, taking its Starter and Complete Editions off sale. All the while, some low-poly grapes stayed static in the breeze. Jagged, delicious, minding their own business. Until their blockiness was papped and thrust into the public eye. Memes ensued and the grapes became the talk of the town, so much so that they’ve been smoothed out in the latest patch, much to everyone’s dismay.

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