Just got the expansion on STEAM only 29.99 (glad I waited). I wanted to share all my first thoughts and opinions on the expansion here. Things I liked, and things I did not.

1. The late release on STEAM with no updated feedback on its release progress. They announced it would not be released on STEAM on launch day and they would let us know about it soon. After saying that, they did not say a single word till its release date on STEAM which was April 19th. I felt they should have atleast made a statement every week after missed release just to say they havent forgoten about us and that it was coming still. Instead it was absolutly silent until it was actually on STEAM the day of its release.

I noticed the community was misinformed on installs processes and how to get the discount, but I couldn't post because I let my sub run out till release of SoA on steam. People could not get the discount 29.99 price because they had to uninstall thier copy that was installed on steam in order for the discounted price to show up, so there was misinfo there, and most people probably regret not waiting now because we did get a discount and a chocobo shirt with the desiter cap, and an official install on Steam now.

2. The start of the quest was really great, how they allowed us to get started with a cutscene upon zoning to my home nation. After getting to Jeuno and talking to the lady there I found out again really fast that the SE devs are still not quest friendly, was hoping they would be alot more friendly on telling you where to go. It would have been simple for them to add locations of the objective dungeons with a (H-9) POS afterwards. I actually dint see the point in making someone run out somewhere to get access anyways, it was silly and an unessesary time sink if you ask me.

3. After gaining access, the cutscense were very nice and very welcoming, probably the most well done I have seen them do in this games entire life, so A+ to the cutscene artists.

4. After the cutscene in the wild, I had absolutly no clue what direction town was in, needed to be made more clear, So I seen someone run by and just followed them, ran into a ghostlike mob and checked tough, so I decided to run for it, almost made it to the city (thankfully was running the right way) and then I had only three hits till death, and knew the entrance was too far, so I pop'd a elixir, oops!, somewhere around second 6 of the Elixir, Aghahhhhahhahha, Plop, Death can I add you to my friends list! Lucky me, some tarutaru running by raised me and ran off. So my entrance into the city was a deadly one worthy of a screenshot of whats to come!

5. I get to the prospectors guild and sure enough the NPC talks my ears off, nonstop for a mini-novel on a ton of timesinks that I knew is going to suck. It was you get three (abyssea type stones) to do more (wotg type missions) and get to vote on worthless guild upgrades (wotg campaign voting). I guess I was hoping for something more dynamic or new besides the just the town.

6. I get over to the house area, all excited to check out these new islands they said we would have, and after talking to the npc in front of the residence, he said some things about player island and these docks lead to it. So I run into the residence area and its a tiny room that looks like windurst, I'm like, what the??? wheres my island???, so after a few annoying shouts, I find out, there is no islands yet or gardens or all the cool stuff that I heard about.

7. Daughtingly after reading all the novals that just were told to me about redundant content and worthless running around to a dungeon to gain access, my brain was left starving for something exciting or fun to do right away. But I found it doesnt work like that. Instead I was left in the middle of a small town wondering what daunting task to do first. So I logged. Maybe later after I play some shooter games or action games to get my adreniline flowing with action I can have the brainpower and will to try my hand at tackling some of these new long term 50 repetative work tasks to progress futher.

So theres my first thoughts and opinions on this game, please take it with a grain of salt, and if you have advice on something I should try thats super fun at the place I'm at, I'm all ears!