Is Dawntrail the FF14 equivalent of WoW's Shadowlands expansion? No, it's more boring than that

Final Fantasy 14 is in a weird spot at the moment. After a huge wave of goodwill following the WoW: Shadowlands exodus circa 2021, the MMO has kinda fumbled it. If FF14 was a gymnast, it would've absolutely nailed the landing on a triple backflip with Endwalker's base story, staggered around a bit during its patches, then slipped on a suspiciously-placed banana peel during Dawntrail.

Dawntrail endured a gnarly mixed reception from fans—a kinda-mid main scenario questline story, combo'd with a slow patch cycle and a dearth of midcore content means that the expansion itself is still wobbling lazily between Mixed and Mostly Negative on Steam.

Go ahead and type "FF14 Dawntrail" into YouTube, and (unless my algorithm is particularly pessimistic) you'll be subjected to far more criticism than praise—some of which is from the MMO's more prolific personalities.

Given FF14's history, then, the easy comparison becomes: Is Dawntrail the Shadowlands of Final Fantasy 14? Has the pendulum now swung in the other direction?

It's a reasonable thought to have. Player dissatisfaction, long-standing issues, a downright glacial content release schedule that's only gotten slower and more ponderous with FF14's success. Since WoW mostly hit its stride again, there's renewed competition, too. Are we in the 'it's so over' era?

The answer is, unfortunately, no. I say "unfortunately" because, at least with a catastrophe, Square Enix might be shocked into doing something—the truth is, FF14's troubles are just incredibly boring. Which is not a good sell for a feature, I admit, but bear with me.

Good content, bad tempo

I'm not going to be focused on Dawntrail's story, because I've already talked about it at length here. I thought Patch 7.2's story was honestly downright serviceable. However, my most controversial opinion is that FF14's story is key for morale, but not much else: We're still playing an MMO, and the things you stay subbed for are the things you can do inside it. Or in other words, a great FF14 expansion story can keep players invested in tough times. The inverse isn't true.

On paper, Dawntrail should have a hefty helping of casual to midcore content to keep people invested: variant dungeons, cosmic exploration, a new exploration zone, and a new limited job. However, we're almost approaching one year, and none of it's out yet.

That's because Square Enix's prioritisation of content releasing is—and I'm about to use some very harsh words here—absolutely and categorically nonsensical with zero justification as to why it's been this way for so long.

Final Fantasy 14 expansions are traditionally extremely backloaded with casual and midcore content. You can set your watch to FF14's past releases, they're that rote. Still, to illustrate the issue for the nth time, in patches 7.1 and 7.2 (around 10 months) casual to midcore players have enjoyed:

• About 4-8 hours of new story content.
• Two new dungeons.
• One new trial.
• Some new PvP grinds.
• Custom deliveries and society quests.
• An alliance raid with rewards once per week.
• Two batches of raid boss fights to be done once a week.

At least three of these elements—the story, dungeons, and trial—are mostly one-and-done, or form part and parcel of your tedious daily roulettes. Everything else is either once per week or nothing spectacularly new, leading to a combined weekly playtime of, what, four hours, at a push? And most of it's the same chores in a different outfit—custom deliveries and society quests are particularly guilty of this, with zero mechanical change since Heavensward.

Other non-hardcore content has suffered from a similar death of innovation. Take FATEs, for example. In Shadowbringers, there was a new rewards mechanic added, but FATEs in Dawntrail feel mostly the same as the FATEs of A Realm Reborn about a decade ago. You go to a place. You either AoE monsters or knock over bosses. You rinse and repeat.

Are you having fun? Sure, back in 2021, but is this really the best we can do after four years? Sorry, says Square Enix, the actual new stuff'll be here in 10 months. Please look forward to it.

I cannot fathom why this is the sort of content prioritised for the game's launch months—not the exploration zones with their new bespoke mechanics, but the "go do three tediously boring quests" filler chores. Square Enix is to be commended for its banger raids, dungeons, and trials this expansion—all of which have had a good sense of challenge and inventiveness in their mechanics. It's just that square barely wants you doing them—unless you're a raider.

The hardcore playerbase has far more to chew on. An Ultimate, several Extreme fights, two raid tiers to work through, and Chaotic Alliance Raids. And while these fights have been released on a predictable timescale, our own resident raider Mollie Taylor says Square's been on the top of its game.

Why, then, is all the midcore content shoved to 10 months—almost a year—after release? The answer is I have no idea. I'm almost convinced that Square Enix isn't certain at this point, either. It's just the same as it ever was, watching the days go by.

The reason this is different from Shadowlands is because, well, Blizzard's issues were with consistency. Its disastrous expansion didn't see a major patch for a staggering 218 days. That's around seven months, a complete disintegration of the developer pipeline. A trainwreck by all accounts.

But for FF14, everything I've yapped about in the above is something I've complained about on this site before, and I've been here for almost two years. FF14 has all the same problems it had in 2021 and 2022. Then I joined PC Gamer's staff, and it had the same problems in 2023 and 2024 too, so I wrote about them. I wager it'll have the same woes in 2026. Nothing ever happens.

Everything stays, right where you left it

Unlike Shadowlands, Dawntrail isn't a sudden breaking point or an apocalyptic explosion of fan outrage. It's a boring, dwindling failing of the light. Square Enix is cosily asleep in a house that's on fire—and when the exploration content finally hits (not this month, but the next), it'll finally jump to its feet, grab the fire extinguisher, and I will be regularly playing my favourite MMO again.

But I'm convinced at this point that we'll have the same problems in 8.0 to 8.2, 9.0 to 9.2, and so on. Creative Studio 3 has not given me confidence that it's got the time, energy, or funding to start shaking things up. Which is very stupid, given every financial report states FF14 is the breadwinner for most of Square Enix's foibles. But by golly, does it need the love: I feel in my heart of hearts that FF14 is in dire need of a complete and total overhaul of its expansion-launch content.

Some streamers and YouTubers (shoutout to Rinon for pretty much reading my mind) have maintained that the exploration zone and relic content ought to be in 7.1, but I'd push that further, myself. Not only do I want that content in 7.1, I want the base game to feed directly into it.

Picture this: As you go through the Main Scenario Quest, you unlock the first tier of abilities that'll be used in the exploration zone, powers that tie directly into the MSQ and give you a sense of forward progression. Each zone you go to has Bozja-style critical engagement FATEs and solo duels that you can participate in, with rewards you can unlock right away to help break up the exposition dumps.

Then, when you get to max level, there's a short mini-raid ala Delubrum Reginae—let's say with three bosses, not six—that players can grind for special rewards, as well as some upgrades to that first tier of abilities. A humble offering, but something that makes the exploration zone content feel cohesive with the rest of the world.

Imagine if other elements—like custom deliveries and society quests—also had similar overhauls. Crib elements from the upcoming Cosmic Exploration zone to add dynamic gathering and crafting events to deliveries for scrips. Make society quests have players cooperating towards some greater goal rather than just a personal rep grind.

Give us reasons to get out in the world and do stuff. Shake up your release schedule a bit—get unhinged and inventive and surprise me for once! Because, after all, it's worked for WoW.

The slow repair work of Dragonflight and The War Within has, crucially, involved experimentation. Weird pirate battle royales, anniversary events, remixes of old expansions with their own rewards, GW2-style dragon mounts and goblin drift cars, completely overhauled reputation systems, solo dungeons that you actually have a reason to do more than once—I won't lie, a lot of it's been really messy, but it's been interesting.

While Dawntrail isn't like Shadowlands—the way out is still the same: change. An ice-cold fear in my soul tells me that Square Enix can't (or doesn't want to) innovate, that it's paralysed in either fear or tradition, and that it'll continue to rest on its laurels.

There's been limp attempts at capturing that energy, such as with Island Sanctuary and Variant Dungeons, but their issues lay basically unaddressed—despite objections being made early and often. Square Enix had a plan and absolutely zero time or resources to deviate from it.

But something's gotta give. Because while this boring, slow-rolling drain of goodwill isn't bound to cause mass exodus, it's something far more insidious. A tidal wave is scary, you have to run from it. But rising sea levels? Well, you can sit in your home until the ocean comes knocking at your door.