Someone Shouted FFXIV's New Weapon Right at Yoshi-P

Picture the scene: you're at Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Anaheim, the game's director is on stage asking the crowd what weapons they'd like to see in future jobs, and people are shouting everything from crossbows to yo-yos. Somewhere in that chaos, one person yelled out the exact weapon that's coming with Evercold's new jobs. And Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida heard it.

"We heard a lot of different ideas come up" from the crowd, Yoshida said during the stage Q&A, "and, you know, we actually heard one that pertains to the new job. But I will not say which one it is." That's the kind of tease that will drive the FFXIV community absolutely feral for the next three months, and I suspect Yoshida knows that.

The options shouted from the crowd included crossbows, hammers, punches (Monks already exist, but sure), morning stars, a dual-wielded gun and sword combo, and two that got specific reactions from Yoshida: a yo-yo, which he said would "be easy to make," and a whip, which would be "really challenging to animate." Every single one of those is now being dissected on Reddit and Discord as the potential match.

The Whip Theory

I think the whip is the frontrunner, and the reasoning is almost too clean. We know Evercold is adding a new tank and a ranged physical DPS. A whip fits the ranged physical profile perfectly, and Yoshida's comment about animation difficulty reads differently when you consider his team might already be deep into solving that exact problem. Saying "that'd be really hard" about something you're actively doing is peak Yoshi-P energy. But there's a counterargument: the morning star also works for a tank, and the crossbow is a classic ranged physical weapon that FFXIV has never given its own job identity. The honest answer is nobody knows, and Yoshida is clearly enjoying that.

What I find more interesting than the guessing game is how Yoshida described the job selection process itself. It doesn't start with a cool weapon concept or a fan-favourite Final Fantasy class. It starts with data. "When we look at the player data and information that we have on hand, we do see that the DPS role typically has the most players in terms of what they main," Yoshida explained. That's why nearly every expansion ships with at least one new DPS, though he noted that "might change down the line." Once the roles are locked, the battle system team runs an internal contest pitching ideas for each slot. Evercold apparently had five tank concepts and three ranged DPS concepts before Yoshida stepped in to narrow things down.

He also let slip something that'll fuel speculation even further: the new job will be a "14-original," meaning it's not pulled from an existing Final Fantasy game. Yoshida said the gameplay feel was "different than that of what we had in our Final Fantasy series thus far," which rules out obvious legacy picks like Corsair or Beastmaster. A 14-original job with a weapon someone in that crowd guessed. The community has three months to narrow it down before the Berlin Fan Festival on July 25, where we should get real answers.

The Fan Fest weekend also brought news on FFXIV's Switch 2 port, which Yoshida confirmed is targeting 30fps in a stable state when it launches this August. He acknowledged frame rate drops in populated areas like towns but said Duty content performance is something players "don't have to be concerned about." Square Enix is offering a one-month free period for early access on the platform. Separately, the weekend also saw Square Enix launch a 25th anniversary website for Final Fantasy X, which turns 25 on July 19, alongside new merchandise including character plush toys, an art book, and a vinyl soundtrack set. The HD Remaster remains available on modern platforms for anyone who wants to revisit Spira before the anniversary hits.