To those of you that have actually gotten to play EW, what do you think so far?

MSQ is absolutely epic.
If shdowbringers is a 9/10
EW is a straight 10/10

To the people that like the msq (no hate or any thing) what made you love it. I find it hard to like it. It fells to childish for a war.

I've only been leveling Reaper so far, just got it to 80. It's quite fun and has a good amount going on, excited to see how it feels at 90. It may become my new main since SMN got gutted though I think I'll level both equally starting tomorrow (if I can beat the queue boss again, it was rough today).

I love Endwalker. So far storywise it beats SHB for me and I'm only on the L84 quests still.

Easily surpasses Shadowbringers, idk what people are smoking. Granted if you miss the immense lore bombs from every single corner of the game, literally in every sentence, I pity you.

After the second dungeon, it begins picking up but hot around the first trial and after it just keeps going up. There are very few if at all filler moments, and most involve a central focus around the main characters. There's no need to mention music cause that's always gonna be perfection but the dungeons are a sight and a step above SHB.

If you give SHB a 9 / 10 this has to be a 9.5 or 10. But it heavily leans on the lore set up to this point. If you are oblivious to all the various lore ties, then you will miss A LOT.

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Originally Posted by SamsaraTrickstar

To the people that like the msq (no hate or any thing) what made you love it. I find it hard to like it. It fells to childish for a war.

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First off, the changes to Dragoon have made the class much more enjoyable. The smoother play lets me look at the creature(s) more rather than zeroing in on my skill bars. That alone is significant.

No other MSQ line has given me the sense of urgency this one has. Normally I'll do the MSQ in one zone then gather/craft using the resources there before moving on. This time, I just can't bring myself to do it. I do a lot of head-canon RP when I play and knowing the Final Days are coming makes me need to focus on doing what we need to do to deal with the story elements. The pacing isn't fantastic and can be a bit of a slog at some times but is amazing at others. During the slow points I have to remember that we're going through a global-scale story that's tying up all the loose ends of the previous ten years. Portraying (quest designing) such an epic-scale story is difficult for an MMO in the best of times and this is the most Epic of Epic Stories to conclude. In order to "do it right", the team would have to split it up into multiple expansions, but that's just not practical. Given the technical constraints, I think they've done a very good job of portraying the national-scale crises then pulling focus down into small-scale, personal, story arcs. It's these arcs that help build pathos for the average people of the world we're working to save and, in my experience so far, are the most emotionally impactful.

The massive amount of cutscene exposition can, at times, mess with pacing, but they're story rich and are necessary to move the plot forward within the limited zone space. I really enjoy the Follow the Leader quests as they make me slow down and immerse myself in the locale and world at large. My FC mates have been giving me no end of grief for RP-walking through all of these, but since they tend to be when new areas are introduced it gives me the chance to take in the space and notice the little details I would have missed had I been doing the standard MMO-Run-"Walk".

I'm not a fan of the Follow-The-NPC-Not-Too-Close-But-Not-Too-Far quests' they're a right pain in the ass and the mechanism is overused. I agree with people here, certain encounters would have been better done as Trials than as dungeon bosses. I don't know what design limitations caused them to make that decision and it's a bit frustrating, but at least we got to see something more imposing than the typical end boss.

Overall, once the early world building quest arcs are done, the urgency of later portions of the MSQ has me engrossed in it in a way no others have; including HW, which is hands-down my favorite story arc so far.

At first I thought, oh this is going to be about as good as Stormblood (which if I rated them, would be Shadowbringers, Heavensward, Stormblood, with ARR bringing up the rear).

Then it starting edging up on Heavensward and finally passing that.

Now it's passed Shadowbringers and I did not think that was possible.

And I'm not even done yet (level 87 MSQ quests).