Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is entering early access later this week—and, in addition to announcing the official start date for those VIP doors (and dropping an actual Aetheryte in the middle of London) Square Enix has asked players to please, pretty please, be nice about spoilers.
In an official news post, which highlights that Dawntrail'll be entering its early access period at 2 am PDT (that's 10 am BST, or 5 pm PST) June 28—and that email codes will be coming to Dawntrail hopefuls today—the developer additionally put a small ask at the foot of the page, which reads:
"During the early access period, there will be no restrictions on what content you can discuss, post, or stream," Square Enix then asks, with the air of a parent wanting their teenage kids not to trash the house while they're gone: "We ask that early access users please be considerate and do their best to avoid posting spoiler-related content as there are those players who may start at the official launch or play at their own pace."
It's a natural hope, considering how much of a story-focused game Final Fantasy 14 is—half of the juice of any expansion is in its main scenario quest (MSQ) which'll typically average a few dozen hours of single-player RPG content and storytelling.
If anything, such a focus on story makes early access periods like these questionable—though it'll only be a week before it goes live to the public, and the price of entry is pre-ordering the game for its standard price, which anyone hungry enough for a distilled, spoiler-free experience is likely to do anyway. In other words, Square Enix isn't pulling the same baffling gambit it did with the upcoming Life is Strange game.
Regardless, you're probably going to want to keep off YouTube for a while. It's regrettably common nowadays for cutscene-clippers to all-caps story spoilers with a big, plot-sabotaging thumbnail delivered bluntly to your feed because, well. You click on a lot of videos for X game, so the site thinks it must be a great recommendation.
It's gotten to the point where I've actively stopped watching videos on a game I'm currently playing—and I'll sure as shoot be doing the same thing for Dawntrail. Especially since I'll likely be dealing with the standard MMO expansion launch server queue woes—which will hopefully be nothing like Endwalker's, but anything can happen.
