During a panel at PAX East, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida made quite a few announcements about the future of the game, including a new concept of dungeon that you could almost define rogue-like, a new mobile app and a lot more.

  • New Hildibrand quests will come on Patch 3.3
  • Square Enix is creating a mobile app a portion of which allows to chat with your friends, your linkshells and your free company without being logged into the game. That part of the app is already finished. Other features like access to retainers and market are also in development. The team intends to launch it before the next expansion.
  • Hopefully the seven-eleven items will come to the west "very soon."
  • Having FATEs for gatheres and crafters is an interesting idea, and Yoshida-san will talk with the live team about it.
  • While there is a tight schedule until the release of the next expansion, the team is talking to Sega to get Phantasy Star Online 2 content in Final Fantasy XIV as a collaboration event.
  • At the moment the team is looking at The Feast's results and with every new season they will consider new balancing changes.
  • The code for the chocobo buddy is very complex and it's taking a lot of time to allow players to summon chocobos in dungeons and while in the duty finder. Yet, the team is trying.
  • The gender locked gear will be gradually made available for both genders, and the team wants to hear on the forum which pieces of gear they want first, so they can make a list and prioritize. Yoshida-san encouraged the audience to make a single thread and not too many, and to look forward to get the bunny girl outfit for males.
  • The next expansion will have new "jobs," meaning more than one. More info will come at FanFest.
  • Brute Justice was inspired by the Time Bokan series by Tatsunoko. The team wanted to do something a bit more comedic.
  • Implementing flight in all regions, including the original areas, is going to take a long time, and the priority now is creating new ones for the expansion. If it's gonna happen, it's going to be in the far future.
  • The team has more events planned to celebrate other Final Fantasy games like the past event tied with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Yet, they won't say what it's coming exactly.
  • Yoshida-san encouraged the animation team to make a "winky face" emote.
  • The technical means to give legacy items special buffs are available, but the team doesn't want to make items that are considered necessary and would lock out from content people that don't have them.
  • There is a very large lore bible that the lore team uses as reference.
  • Doom train might appear in the future, possibly when players might get to go to Garlemald.
  • Pets for summoners are a complex system, so creating new Egis is difficult, but the team is working on a system to allow players to change the appearence of the existing ones. They would like to add one per patch down the line, starting probably with Carbuncle.
  • Yoshida-san's most hated quest line is the one with the hidden moogles for which he personally apologized to the players. The team is going to work hard to bring back the love for moogles. In Patch 3.3 players will have a chance to get revenge on the Moogle king.
  • Yoshida-san's most loved storyline is Alphinaud' story.
  • In patch 3.35 a new concept called "Deep Dungeons" will be introduced. The first will be The Palace of the Dead.
  • Deep Dungeons will be for solo players or a party of four adventures.
  • They have a completely independent leveling system. Within the dungeon you start at level 1.
  • Progression is auto-saved on select floors, and if you die you respawn back there. Item level is negligible.
  • New floors will be added with future update, creating an "endless" dungeon.
  • You can get stronger by touching special stones, but some are traps, and might make you weaker. There are also special floors in which you can't use magic.
  • The dungeon changes every time you visit it.
  • In patch 3.3 Treasure Dungeons will also be introduced. More information on the patch will come with the new Producer Letter Live on April 29th.

Below you can see a few screenshots and slides about The Palace of the Dead and the Deep Dungeon concept.