Final Fantasy XIV's next expansion announced

The game's director, Naoki Yoshida, announced the news during the opening keynote of Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival this weekend.

It's called Stormblood, and will release in early summer 2017. This time we're going to Ala Mhigo, where we have to liberate it from the long ruling Garlean Empire.

The gorgeous city shown in the trailer is called Rhalgr's Reach, and is where we'll start in the expansion. Naturally, the expansion will also include new job classes (Yoshida said that one of them is inspired of Marvel superheroes, and with him wearing a Scarlet Witch shirt we're guessing it'll be a red mage), gear, primal enemies, dungeons and raids. With these new challenges it's rather fitting that they're also raising the level cap from 60 to 70. As we're getting new gear it's also nice to hear that they're going to increase the inventory size.

Some of you might be relieved to hear that the combat system has been revamped. Yoshida mentioned that skills will be regrouped, and may now only be shared between roles, not jobs. He also said that unused or ineffective actions are being reassessed, and might be changed or removed completely.

One of the new features coming with Stormblood is a special area called "The Forbidden Land Eureka." This area is known to host special rare monsters and materials used to upgrade your high-end weapons.

Yoshida closed the presentation by announcing that they're not going to support the PS3 version any more. A PS3 to PS4 upgrade campaign is planned, which will allow PS3 players to seamlessly join in the battle for Ala Mhigo at launch.

They'll give us further details in December, but for now we'll have to do with this, the first trailer and a few images.