What was your favourite expansion stories, ranked in order?

1 - Heavensward
2 - Shadowbringers
3 - Stormblood
4 - A Realm Reborn
5 - Endwalker

1. Endwalker
The concept of suffering and depression being the antagonist is very appealing to me and accepting that suffering exist in order to conquer it is very relatable in life. The purpose of life is not to deny suffering but to accept suffering and rise above it.

2. Heavensward
A 1000 year war based on a lie. What's not to like? The Archbishop knowing about the lie but keeping it to keep the war going in order to fuel 1000 years of prayers for the eventual summoning. Amazing!

3. Stormblood
I'm a sucker for Empire vs Resistance story but Fordola and Yotsuyu are the ones that put it over Shadowbringers for me. I'm glad that the story don't just focus on the fighting but zoom in on the antagonist characters to see their past, their decisions they had to make and the consequences they had to live through.

4. Shadowbringers
For 5/6th of the story, it's just about going to each area and beat the area boss to bring back darkness. There are great character moments like Thancred but the overarching story didn't get going until after the 2nd trial. Even then Emet's sob story didn't move me. Maybe because I'm a lone wolf and I like doing things alone, solo traveling, eating out by myself so I don't fully understand why Emet tried to bring back his old world instead of enjoying himself in the sundered world.

1. Shadowbringers - works the best out of all the expansions as it's own, great self contained story.
2. Endwalker - still great, and while not as good imho as Shadowbringers, it serves very well as a conclusion to the story. Endwalker is amazing and great as a conclusion, but Shadowbringers does take the cake a bit further up narratively. Elpis was wonderful and I would love more content with Venat, Emet and Hythlodaias
3. Heavensward - dragons, and great story content and characters. Plus we get to see a good heap of Alphinauds character being improved on a lot.
4. Stormblood - Interesting concepts, terrible execution. It felt like it was trying to tell two different epic/great/grand stories, but failed by telling both mediocre rather then just going with one story line that was fleshed out.
5 ARR - the slowest, most boring part of the game, as expected.

1. Heavensward - Although I am not a fan of Ishgard proper or how the writers largely glossed over what a terrible society it is, HS had Ysayle, moogles, and the Vath Deftarm. I still miss Ysayle, I wish the mcguffins were as overused back then as they are now. :(
2. ARR - Things made some degree of sense back then. Also, Moogles again. It's a long story, even with the latest cuts, and some filler was infuriating, but it had a lot of charm, especially job quests.
3. Endwalker - Yoshida said I shouldn't think about the story so much anyway, so I'm going to focus on Nidhana, Matsya, and the Loporrits, while doing a great imitation of Livingway's deadpan "AAAAAH!" in my mind for the rest.
4. Stormblood - I can't believe Papalymo died for this.
5. Shadowbringers - A lot of people were excited about the thicc'qote rigs, and then devs revealed they were created simply for the writers to screech "fat people bad" like gradeschoolers and try to pass it off as a plot. Then they tried to set up like the fat guy was the evil one, instead of the one who Tempered him with a Lightwarden in utero and groomed him to be their tool of destruction from birth. I don't know why I expected more from Square after Prompto and Wedge, but I did. My b.

1. Stormblood- I always like more political stuff and I relate a lot to both Ala mhigan and doman. The story reminds me of my country's struggle against colonization. I really like lyse too despite what people said. What can I say? I'm really biased, I know.

2. Shadowbringers- because the "light corruption" story reminds me of ff15 ardyn's fate lol. And also, because we get more content on emet and thancred. I only put ShB in second place because I TRULY HATE, DESPISE, AND CAN'T GET OVER how much they butchered minfilia's only chance to become a real character and liked by the fanbase. Instead we get new character to fill the "cute imouto" niche.

3. Heavensward- ishgard is pretty, nidhogg is okay as a villain imo. Alphinaud's arc here is superb, and I like ysayle. Doesn't get the obsession with haurchefant nor do I really care about him though.

4. ARR- only put this below HW because how badly paced some sections were. But let me just say that the bloody banquet is pretty much still the best thing ffxiv ever done imo.

5. Endwalker- it's not that it's a bad story, but it certainly the most dissapointing for me.

1. HW - It hit a lot of great notes, the story kept to a local scale as it mostly dealt with ishgard and the dragons. The characters involved in it all showed some development. Didn't actually play when HW endgame was current, so can't comment too much on it sadly.
2. ShB - This ones very close with the next one on my list. While I am not a fan of the whole 'saving the whole world' story in mmos, as they lead to ever greater and greater escalation, the first wa a very interesting Post apocalyptic setting, and the characters we met in it and what we learned abotu the Setting duringit were great.
3. StB - Only behind ShB because they did not quite nail the split storylines. I really loved the fact they did pick the conflict with the empire back up, and it felt like a reasonable follow up storywise to what had been set up in ARR and the HW patches. Ivalice is still my favorite 24 man raid series, and the trials were all fun imho.
4. ARR - The fact it had to lay a *lot* of groundwork, and the sheer length of it compared to the others is what holds this back the most imho.
5. EW - besides my personal dislike for 'save the world/universe' type plots in MMOs, it also, imho, suffered the same issues StB had. Garlemald was basicly not affected by what we did in thavnair, which was the only place the final days seeemd to mater in, elpis, while a great arc (up until instead of having the past we visited branch of to a new future they used memory wipe and stable time loop handwavium) was compeltely disconnected form the rest of the events. And ultmathule was just one big swamp of heavy handed 'isn't this sad?' that, for the first and so far only time in this game, pushed me to skip cutscenes because after the second time we lost a bunch of scions, it was clear they'd all be handwaved back.

1. A Realm Reborn - I don't think ARR's story gets the credit it deserves. It's mostly known now as "the thing you have to get through to get to the good parts." But your introduction to the world of Final Fantasy XIV remains my personal favorite experience, fetch quests in the post-game aside. The first time I went through the 2.55 stuff was a gut punch in the most delightful way.

2. Endwalker - The only time I will ever relate to Hades is here, where he is depicted as a man who had to wake up way too early to have to go someplace he really doesn't want to go and is accompanied by the person who is the embodiment of the :3c emoji, so props to that. Puddingway single-handedly put this expansion this high up.
That said, the handwaving of the Garlean Empire, probably THE biggest constant antagonists up to this point just behind the Ascians, being reduced to "who DOESN'T have liars and murderers" makes my face collide with my desk. Repeatedly.

3. Heavensward - Ishgard was a refuge of convenience and the only reason we got involved in their war was because we couldn't afford for the dergs to attack the only real refuge we had left. I found it hard to get invested in the fate of this place at all, folks like Haurchefant aside. I felt it was also a very disappointing resolution to that gut punch I felt earlier with ARR's final content. The final HW content bridging to Stormblood also felt very off.

4. Stormblood - The absolute clownboaty, cartoonishly evil bent of the Empire on full display here. Going from Gaius to Regulus to Zenos is a considerable downgrade as far as adversary goes. Lyse gets to lead the Resistance because of reasons, mostly because everyone in front of her gets killed off (RIP Meffrid) and she has a last name. The writers were probably aiming to depict a learning experience through her travels through Doma but unless I missed something, absolutely nothing changed about her. Also, Fordola's got no business still breathing.

5. Shadowbringers - As stated in another post, Square-Enix relied heavily on The Feels(tm) to try and distract players from the fact that the story was a mish-mashed mess, especially when it came to Eulmore. The first time you've ever seen fat people in Final Fantasy XIV and it was used to show how clearly lazy and evil the people of Eulmore were.

Also this:
Emet-Selch: "I don't consider you alive, so ergo, it won't be murder if I kill you."
A disturbing number of FFXIV players: "You know, he's got a point..."

And so began way, way, way too many players working overtime to justify and excuse atrocities with "Wouldn't you step on an anthill to save your family?"

Here is the order I'd rank them in, and why:

1) Shadowbringers: I love its focus on a world whose heroes failed, and whose world is near dead because of it. In addition to graha's amazing backstory of getting the crystal tower there, and the revelation of what the ascians went through, going from light warden to light warden gave the combat progression through the story something consistent but meaningful to experience.

2) ARR: I know I'm in the minority here, but given FFXIV was my first mmo (and the first to hook me), ARR was quite literally my beginning with a combat system more complex than just hitting dodge and spamming circle. ARR is also, at least in the entirety of its story, the most final fantasy experience in this game still. Every other expansion has shifted away from this and felt more like stories that were inspired by final fantasy rather than being a final fantasy experience. I felt more like I was playing a final fantasy game fighting moogles with my conjurer artifact gear than fighting a dragon in a sweater and skirt glam lol (though I have myself to blame for getting too influenced by the fashion sense some people have in this game by the time I reached HW).


3) Heavensward: While it is a coherent story with reasonable pacing, I largely felt like I was just going back and forth between the dragons and aymeric. I found the story dull and uninteresting, though aesthetically it was pleasing. I will say the post-patch story for HW was amazing, and showed me that this game had the writing potential people were always raving about.

4) Endwalker: I enjoyed the story until we met the rabbit folk, which then from there, became contrived, dull, and just character fan service (looking at you elpis and ultima thule). I was really hoping given how Shb was a story progression of going from light warden to light warden, that we'd be going from tower to tower fighting the twisted primal conceptions of those suffering around the world. In terms of story, Endwalker was largely dissappointing, but I do love meterion and how she fits in terms of explaining the end of times. In addition, she's incredibly adorable.

5) Stormblood: Its MSQ was just straight up garbage lol the only good thing about SB was that it had fantastic battle content, and even until this day, some of the best dungeons in the game. Again in the minority, I loved Eureka.

1. Tie between ShB/Endwalker
2. Stormblood
3. Heavensward
4. ARR

1. Stormblood
2. Shadowbringers
3. Endwalker
4. A Realm Reborn
5. Heavensward