8.0 speculation

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

the Fanfest has FF7 theme stuff for FF14 with the Red XIII minion and new Bike mount. Why do I feel as if the next expansion Shard location maybe FF7 themed?

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I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Shadowbringers Fanfest items were a FFVII motorcycle and FFVII character minions and I don’t remember anything about it being FFVII-related.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Shadowbringers Fanfest items were a FFVII motorcycle and FFVII character minions and I don’t remember anything about it being FFVII-related.

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It depends where it leads in upcoming patch which looks like we are going back Garlemald for whatever is leading into the next expansion. If we are getting something Garlean related and themed content leading to the expansion's theme with a shard that has a similar civilization to the Garlean Empire, FF7 will fit into the theme for Garlemald and a Shard that has a Counterpart for Garlemald.

Not to mention the whole Garlean "enhanced Soldiers" part that will also fit into a FF7 theme expansion for a 1st Class SOLDIER Job.

Okay so here's my two pennies

Something has gone very wrong with the lifestream since we left a power vacuum and "something" has gotten loose mayhap a serpent of some sort hinted back in Endwalker and we need to go down there and sort it.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Shadowbringers Fanfest items were a FFVII motorcycle and FFVII character minions and I don’t remember anything about it being FFVII-related.

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I think we need to wait to see what the preorder / premium edition items are, because those are usually more thematically resonant with the expack. While it's true before Endwalker Fan Fest items were not all that resonant with the expack, Endwalker and Dawntrail both went extremely hard with that given how much influence IV and IX had on them, respectively. I would have written them off as just nostalgia bait items beforehand, but given the heavy influence of legacy titles on recent plotlines I don't think that's a prudent conclusion - whether you like whatever legacy title it's drawing from or not.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

That did not stop them from making Crystal Tower manditory.

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Yeah, that's WHY they wouldn't do it for Eden. Crystal Tower being made mandatory was ridiculously unpopular, and Crystal Tower is maybe the single easiest side-content ask you can make; it's just three instances and they're all such cakewalks that you're more likely to die to someone getting bored and deciding to wipe the team for fun than actual difficulty.

Meanwhile, with twelve instances and fights that really don't hold back, Eden is plausibly the hardest ask you could make. (The Arcadion might be harder, but I think that's got one or two really hard fights while Eden's just reliably heavy hitters.) And all for what? Fanservice for a character those people only might have heard of if they play an entirely unrelated game?

The developers of this game are not that stupid. That would genuinely damage the game.


And as for the Fanfest rewards: Yeah, we got FFVII rewards for Shadowbringers, and FFX outfits for Stormblood. Sometimes those are just an excuse to vomit out some fanservice and it isn't actually foreshadowing. I would absolutely write them off as nostalgia bait items, because there's a decent chance that they're just that, and you won't find out that they are until you have better evidence to talk about anyway.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, that's WHY they wouldn't do it for Eden. Crystal Tower being made mandatory was ridiculously unpopular, and Crystal Tower is maybe the single easiest side-content ask you can make; it's just three instances and they're all such cakewalks that you're more likely to die to someone getting bored and deciding to wipe the team for fun than actual difficulty.

Meanwhile, with twelve instances and fights that really don't hold back, Eden is plausibly the hardest ask you could make. (The Arcadion might be harder, but I think that's got one or two really hard fights while Eden's just reliably heavy hitters.) And all for what? Fanservice for a character those people only might have heard of if they play an entirely unrelated game?

The developers of this game are not that stupid. That would genuinely damage the game.


And as for the Fanfest rewards: Yeah, we got FFVII rewards for Shadowbringers, and FFX outfits for Stormblood. Sometimes those are just an excuse to vomit out some fanservice and it isn't actually foreshadowing. I would absolutely write them off as nostalgia bait items, because there's a decent chance that they're just that, and you won't find out that they are until you have better evidence to talk about anyway.

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As I said, if they are not going to make Eden manditory but still make Gaia important for main storyline later as a Main Character, they can stick to the system they have now and adjust dialogue based on if players finish Eden Raid or not OR they add a Recap system that allows players to get a simple summary of all important parts of Eden Raid story without needing to do it so that the Main storyline will always assume Eden raid was done by the Player and players can choose to play Eden Raid or not just to get the direct experience with what happened beyond the short recap.

They do not need to make Eden Raid required if they decide to make Gaia a main character for this new Main Story arc since they won't need to reference Eden Raid often during and after the base X.0 expansion Main Story unless it is for important lore topics involving the Main story. Just fill in the gaps with dialogue referencing what happened IF WoL never got involved in the side content as they always do.

Regarding Gaia, while it is not impossible for the devs to establish some kind of bypass system to "explain the basics of Eden without playing it", there is absolutely no precedent for it in the game so far, and doing so would mark a major shift in how they handle the canon nature of side content. At this point we have no indication they would do such a thing, and instead have seen them take it in the opposite direction: giving Gaia an MSQ appearance that is still thoroughly locked behind completion of the questline.

Until we are told they are changing their well-established system, there is no reason to have any expectation that Gaia will become a full MSQ-participating character.

To be fair, we've been here somewhat before with G'raha, but we've seen how they resolved that. They made Crystal Tower mandatory to allow it to be continued and built upon, which fits in with their overall approach that things are treated as only having happened if the individual player has done them.

The other comparison here is Alisaie turning up in the MSQ for Stormblood after Coils. And I bring that one up because it's actually a great example for why they can't do this with Gaia. With Alisaie all they had to do was 'yadda yadda' past Coils, which is largely because she is still the same character before and after; Coils didn't really affect her or the world around her, so all that needs to be addressed is her actual knowledge of the WoL; if you've done Coils she's a friend, if you haven't she's just a vague acquaintance. She can and does exist outside of Coils.

Gaia actually doesn't exist outside of Eden. Her state as a character changes radically over the events of that story, and crucially, she starts it basically inaccessible, as an amnesiac prisoner somewhere off in the Empty. You cannot 'yadda yadda' past Eden to bring Gaia in, because Eden is Gaia's entire story, she does not exist without it.

And again, why bother? This is going through great lengths and basically just rewriting the narrative rules the game's entirely stuck to until now, solely to... what? Bring in a character for fanservice purposes that the people you're doing this for, by definition, cannot be fans of, because they have not met her? That's ridiculous, especially given Gaia's already thrived quite well off in side content and conditional scenes that only play for people who actually do know who she is.

Merchant's Tale has had me thinking about fiction in the world of XIV a lot, and so I started poking around in the Omega raids because of how it drew upon in-universe stories for the fights. The only story characters that the characters had the most knowledge of was of Halicarnassus.

From Nero

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"Halicarnassus, you say? The Queen of Dimension Castle?"

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"Literary historians have speculated that the tale could be loosely based on events which took place in the Fourth Astral Era, but little remains of that age, and there is no way to verify the claim. Indeed, most now assume the story to be a work of pure fiction."

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If there is a possibility it was based off 'true events' then it makes me think The Key could be involved. Halicarnassus was the Queen of Dimension Castle. The nods to FFV in Occult Crescent, and Enuo appearing as an MSQ trial makes me wonder if the truth of the tale of Halicarnassus could pop up in 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, that's WHY they wouldn't do it for Eden. Crystal Tower being made mandatory was ridiculously unpopular, and Crystal Tower is maybe the single easiest side-content ask you can make; it's just three instances and they're all such cakewalks that you're more likely to die to someone getting bored and deciding to wipe the team for fun than actual difficulty.

Meanwhile, with twelve instances and fights that really don't hold back, Eden is plausibly the hardest ask you could make. (The Arcadion might be harder, but I think that's got one or two really hard fights while Eden's just reliably heavy hitters.) And all for what? Fanservice for a character those people only might have heard of if they play an entirely unrelated game?

The developers of this game are not that stupid. That would genuinely damage the game.


And as for the Fanfest rewards: Yeah, we got FFVII rewards for Shadowbringers, and FFX outfits for Stormblood. Sometimes those are just an excuse to vomit out some fanservice and it isn't actually foreshadowing. I would absolutely write them off as nostalgia bait items, because there's a decent chance that they're just that, and you won't find out that they are until you have better evidence to talk about anyway.

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I think it was unpopular because it was crystal tower specifically. we hated getting it in roulette and basically got told we'd get it a lot more please look forward to it! Eden is that best raid series story and fight wise imo and the ff8 remixes go hard. It's also level 80 so we actually have some buttons.

With regards to final fantasy 7 references, I don't believe we'll get anything as on the nose as the ffiv fan service in ew. I do believe we will get Jenova as a trial or raid and hear me out! It will be linked to Oizys from Cosmic exploration, The plague on the Grebuloff homeworld and/or perhaps as the prime mover of the omicron empire. In stigma dreamscape we can see not all omicron wanted to go forth with expansionism despite the fact that a robot network should work as a hive mind. What if as a subversion to Jenova using her cells to control biological lifeforms, she employs a digital virus to the omicron infecting most of the network to conqueror planets to mine their minerals for machinery while she saps the aether like she would the lifestream of planets she'd hop to in ff7?

Oizys's gravitational anomaly looks way to much like ff7's meteor after getting hit by a rocket! Not only that but it looks drained of it's aether much like the burn as if it was recently sucked dry by an alien monstrosity.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi...teor_FFVII.jpg

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Shadowbringers Fanfest items were a FFVII motorcycle and FFVII character minions and I don’t remember anything about it being FFVII-related.

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Shadowbringers trial series was literally some the most iconic boss fights from ff7 the weapons?! We literally go to terncliff which is basically Junon with no cannon and an npc states we should have blow sapphire weapon's head off with a cannon.

can't wait for someone to do the eden raids and say shadowbringers had no ff8 references holy fork and shirtballs I'm losing my mind harder than cloud.

https://i.imgur.com/mvL8gU5.gif

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

I think it was unpopular because it was crystal tower specifically. we hated getting it in roulette and basically got told we'd get it a lot more please look forward to it! Eden is that best raid series story and fight wise imo and the ff8 remixes go hard. It's also level 80 so we actually have some buttons.

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You're kinda right that the Crystal Tower is almost so easy that it loops back around and is just mind-numbingly tedious, but I don't think the solution is 'hardest raid series', because you've also missed that some people didn't like having to do raids at all. That the Crystal Tower, easy as it was in practice, was an extra chore between them and 'The Good Part' (be that 'good part' either Heavensward or Shadowbringers; both were true depending on where you were progress-wise), and a fairly intimidating one on top of it if you haven't done it before; running with twenty-four people in what's called a 'raid', which is a term MMOs usually reserve for 'end-game content', is kinda scary! Yes, factor in the people on the higher end when talking about something like this, but also factor in that, according to publicly available achievement stats, only about 65% of the playerbase have even finished Eden at all, and you have to assume that other 35% might well have some decent internal reasons and would balk if you asked them to. And frankly, I don't want to do more Eden than I have to either, some of those fights REALLY drag!

My thought, if you told me 'exactly one raid series MUST be made mandatory', I think the pick is Ivalice. Not only is it already the non-mandatory raid series with the highest completion rate anyway at 76%, and is an alliance raid series so you're only asking someone to commit to three queues/instances, but it's also got no huge peaks or valleys in difficulty. Mathbot memes aside, none of those fights are really 'turn your brain off and experience ego death' easy or 'look up a guide and practice strategies' hard. I still wouldn't recommend making that mandatory, but it's the least dangerous one to do it with.

EDIT: Also, while I was posting this, the 7.5 special site went up, so we have actual things to speculate on here. Looks like things might indeed be getting Voidular, but I'd suspect it also being Ilsabard-centric; we're still going to Garlemald, so logically the problem's at least partially based there, it'd be weird if Clyteum was the one place with this problem.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Shadowbringers trial series was literally some the most iconic boss fights from ff7 the weapons?! We literally go to terncliff which is basically Junon with no cannon and an npc states we should have blow sapphire weapon's head off with a cannon.

can't wait for someone to do the eden raids and say shadowbringers had no ff8 references holy fork and shirtballs I'm losing my mind harder than cloud.

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The poster I was responding to was talking about FFVII as an expansion’s setting/main story inspiration, not side content.

Yeah, it seem like The Void might be a thing we're going to have to deal with, and I don't mean The Thirteenth.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Yeah, it seem like The Void might be a thing we're going to have to deal with, and I don't mean The Thirteenth.

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Nah, the boss we can see in a Clyteum screenshot is an Ahriman having somehow taken over a Scorpion Tank. And the MSQ screenshots are focused on Mare Lamentorum, and we all remember what was up there last we checked.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Nah, the boss we can see in a Clyteum screenshot is an Ahriman having somehow taken over a Scorpion Tank. And the MSQ screenshots are focused on Mare Lamentorum, and we all remember what was up there last we checked.

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It has ahriman aspects to it, but it also seems plant-based.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The other comparison here is Alisaie turning up in the MSQ for Stormblood after Coils. And I bring that one up because it's actually a great example for why they can't do this with Gaia. With Alisaie all they had to do was 'yadda yadda' past Coils, which is largely because she is still the same character before and after; Coils didn't really affect her or the world around her, so all that needs to be addressed is her actual knowledge of the WoL; if you've done Coils she's a friend, if you haven't she's just a vague acquaintance. She can and does exist outside of Coils.

Gaia actually doesn't exist outside of Eden. Her state as a character changes radically over the events of that story, and crucially, she starts it basically inaccessible, as an amnesiac prisoner somewhere off in the Empty. You cannot 'yadda yadda' past Eden to bring Gaia in, because Eden is Gaia's entire story, she does not exist without it.

And again, why bother? This is going through great lengths and basically just rewriting the narrative rules the game's entirely stuck to until now, solely to... what? Bring in a character for fanservice purposes that the people you're doing this for, by definition, cannot be fans of, because they have not met her? That's ridiculous, especially given Gaia's already thrived quite well off in side content and conditional scenes that only play for people who actually do know who she is.

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Has it really been that long that people forgotten how Estinien started out in FF14?

A literal character in a side content that people "cannot be fans of" because they have not met him or how he was before he became a Main Character in 3.0 Main Storyline (Estinien literally wanted WoL dead because he was still blinded by vengeance, attempted to kill WoL, and Players were ready for a round two with him whenever he decide to attack again because of how 2.0 Dragoon Quest ended). Yes it was not a Raid but the first Job quest storyline for Dragoon in 1.0/2.0. He did not become a fan favorite until becoming a Main Character in FF14 due to all the developments he went through and players getting to know him more in the Main Storyline. Not to mention certain parts of 3.0 to 3.X did felt players would have gotten better context if they done the Dragoon Quest first but they manage to make things work and not require Dragoon 2.0 job quests after since everything they needed was just through 3.0 for Estinien as a Main Character. They just worked from there for his character into what he is now in current storyline.

Either way seem like a decent point to stop discussing this here since we cannot really find common ground due to concerns about how will Gaia affect FF14 Main Story by making Eden raid manditory or Not manditory but having context issues with alternate dialogues.

Not to mention now the next patch content is up and now just waiting for maybe 7.55 stuff after for the expansion teasers.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Has it really been that long that people forgotten how Estinien started out in FF14?

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Estinien was a bad idea.

Anyone who's leveled Dragoon after Heavensward (or hell, even during it) knows that it becomes an ugly continuity snarl where Estinien flickers between states at random and it's really sloppy and confusing. Sure, love Estinien as a character all you want, but he's also an example of why they've never done that a second time outside of brief cameos.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It has ahriman aspects to it, but it also seems plant-based.

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My read is that it's actually an Ahriman trying, with... questionable success, to possess a machine that doesn't really know how to. So instead of doing a 'classical' possession and making some new kind of voidsent it's just sorta trying to leak into the gaps between machine parts and brute-force it.

Suggesting that perhaps a mass Thirteenth incursion into Ilsabard isn't just going to be Ilsabard facing horrors that it cannot fully comprehend, but also the Voidsent having the exact same problem.

With the Special Site up, I'm still not sure what to make of what's going on.

For starters, it's weird to do more Void stuff so soon after 6.x's Void Arc, even if it's been a background element for a long, long time, especially considering all of the Void-related content already in the game (Crystal Tower, Shadow of Mhach, background elements in Warring Triad and Shadowbringers, the aforementioned Void Arc). It's similarly weird to be doing more V fanservice when we got some in Dawntrail itself (Occult Crescent) and have gotten plenty more in the past (Krile, Galuf Baldesion, aspects of Shinryu, Deltascape, Forbidden Land Eureka). It does appear to be a Void incursion in Ilsabard (the Clyteum), but there's still the matter of what's happening on the Moon, in Mor Dhona, and how Halmarut and Enuo both factor into what's going on. (Oh and Calyx is still there as a Mica monochrome plush, I guess.)

"The Unmaking" could not be a more ominous trial name. The dungeon boss (if it is a boss and not just a mob) is clearly an Ahriman melting itself onto a Guard Scorpion to hijack it.

Anyway, while there is precedent for making side content necessary (or providing additional context) it's never been a popular thing to do. Personally I don't think Eden is that big of an ask, and they can make an abridged introduction for characters originating in side content, I don't think it's a thing they're really going to do. Gaia is not that popular of a character, even if she was selected (probably not by CBU III) to appear in a spinoff game. I do think she would have a unique perspective on the sundered Ascians that could be interesting to include, but as a side character that's a tough sell even if I don't agree Eden is that difficult of a raid series to complete. (Maybe the Fatebreaker is a little tricky, but the rest is... ehh, especially if you're backtracking post-Dawntrail out of necessity.)

Original stuff, perhaps? Eh.

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :

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"Returned from the levin-wracked lands of the Ninth, the Warrior of Light and their companions resume investigations into the key. Yet as they begin to unravel its mysteries, an ally's unsettling message threatens to draw their attention elsewhere..."

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"Après avoir vécu moult péripéties dans le neuvième reflet, nos héros sont rentrés de Tréno le cœur satisfait. Mais la "clef qui relie les mondes" n'a pas encore dévoilé tous ses mystères, et alors que l'enquête progresse enfin, une alliée bien connue vient apporter une nouvelle inquiétante..."

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"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :


"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

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Given they go to the moon, I'm guessing Livingway? The German version also uses the feminine form of friend.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, that's WHY they wouldn't do it for Eden. Crystal Tower being made mandatory was ridiculously unpopular, and Crystal Tower is maybe the single easiest side-content ask you can make; it's just three instances and they're all such cakewalks that you're more likely to die to someone getting bored and deciding to wipe the team for fun than actual difficulty.

Meanwhile, with twelve instances and fights that really don't hold back, Eden is plausibly the hardest ask you could make. (The Arcadion might be harder, but I think that's got one or two really hard fights while Eden's just reliably heavy hitters.) And all for what? Fanservice for a character those people only might have heard of if they play an entirely unrelated game?

The developers of this game are not that stupid. That would genuinely damage the game.

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Going to play Devil's Advocate for a second. To my knowledge, 7.5 is going to complete the team's work on going back and adding Duty Support to all of the old dungeons. They could very easily expand this system out to some older 8-man content as the next goal, now that the dungeons are all caught up. We already have some modern 8-man story trials that allow for Duty Support within the last two expansions. It would not be impossible for them to make an older storyline like Eden a required part of the story while mitigating the group anxiety or difficulty issues with Duty Support. Eden being a raid and a step up from the existing support trials might require some more balancing work, but it's easily something they could do. And some level of this integration for old content does seem like a logical next step in their stated goal of making as much of the story of the game accessible to solo players. Actually, now that I've typed this all out, I expect it to happen on some level, perhaps targeting older, existing story trials first.

In spite of all that, I don't see them ever actually making a side story a required stop for MSQ progression again. But if they did want to, the above would mitigate the main issues CT had.

(And FWIW, I'd personally rather they choose the Weapons line and integrate Gaius with the main cast over Eden/Gaia)

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Originally Posted by Mansion

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

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To my memory no, other than the fact we didn't really do anything short-term to actually improve the state of the Void (Thirteenth). We defeated Zeromus and turned it into a Memoria Crystal, then planted it out in the Empty on the First under the supposition that doing so would hasten the aetheric rebalancing out there (beyond the immediate area around Eden) and restore life to the land. Golbez (Durante) started on the path to atonement and promised along with Zero to find another way to restore the Thirteenth to life, which may just happen on it's own over time if the First's Light imbalance corrects itself thanks to our actions. Zero bade us farewell until next time and that was that.

So yeah, we resolved the IV adaptation but not much else in the short term.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :


"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Given they go to the moon, I'm guessing Livingway? The German version also uses the feminine form of friend.

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English is an unusually gender-neutral language, so that slipping through the cracks is only to be expected.

Zero doesn't have a way to contact us, and the Moon is featuring so I figured it was Livingway. Either that or a distress call from Alisae out in Garlemald, which fits the "well known" qualifier even better.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

English is an unusually gender-neutral language, so that slipping through the cracks is only to be expected.

Zero doesn't have a way to contact us, and the Moon is featuring so I figured it was Livingway. Either that or a distress call from Alisae out in Garlemald, which fits the "well known" qualifier even better.

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And incidentally the only other relevant language that's even more gender neutral is Japanese, where all gendered pronouns are implied. Which might be relevant here, but might not. It's just a neat fact that's useful to know with Japanese media!

I wouldn't consider this all too worth digging into, though. It's not like the game has a dearth of relevant female characters, even if they're only given about 30% of the game's lines; this ally being a woman effectively tells us nothing, because there's not really any group or region where the person giving us the call would HAVE to be a man. In fact, there's a few where the opposite is true; if the call is indeed from the moon, then it would only be Livingway.

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Originally Posted by Mixawaves

Going to play Devil's Advocate for a second. To my knowledge, 7.5 is going to complete the team's work on going back and adding Duty Support to all of the old dungeons. They could very easily expand this system out to some older 8-man content as the next goal, now that the dungeons are all caught up.

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I don't actually think duty support would help with the pain points of a mandatory raid series. Sure, it means shorter queue times and a guaranteed crowd if that part of the game is dead, but I don't think either of those are the real, present-day issue. Raids just immediately seem like they're hard, and Eden's certainly got the mechanics to confirm that assumption. (I still see Eden Titan wipe teams.)

Duty support doesn't make content any easier. In fact, anecdotally I think it's actually harder, because the fight resets if you die. If you happen to be the one that sucks at a fight, duty support's gonna make it worse, not better. (And that's leaving aside the possibility that the AI sucks at that fight, which is entirely plausible and has ruined at least one dungeon for me.)

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

As I said, if they are not going to make Eden manditory but still make Gaia important for main storyline later as a Main Character, they can stick to the system they have now and adjust dialogue based on if players finish Eden Raid or not OR they add a Recap system that allows players to get a simple summary of all important parts of Eden Raid story without needing to do it so that the Main storyline will always assume Eden raid was done by the Player and players can choose to play Eden Raid or not just to get the direct experience with what happened beyond the short recap.

They do not need to make Eden Raid required if they decide to make Gaia a main character for this new Main Story arc since they won't need to reference Eden Raid often during and after the base X.0 expansion Main Story unless it is for important lore topics involving the Main story. Just fill in the gaps with dialogue referencing what happened IF WoL never got involved in the side content as they always do.

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That's largely been my take on this problem as well. They don't actually NEED to make the content involving Gaia (or Unukalhai including all of the ShB role quests) required at all. They actually don't even need to create alternate dialogue trees based on what content the player has done. They just need to use the Unending Codex that we already have. Have one version of the relevant character page give a basic overview of who the character or what the context is (and maybe where to "find" more info if desired) and then have a "full" version of the relevant page appear once you've completed the relevant content. Sure it's not as good as actually requiring a play of the content in question but it frees them from the handcuffs of "We can't include that because it's from optional content!"

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

I'm guessing Livingway?.

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Thanks! I forgot the loporites were gendered lol. But then, the whole part on the moon post Zodiark is when I started to dissociate with the MSQ in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

To my memory no, other than the fact we didn't really do anything short-term to actually improve the state of the Void (Thirteenth). We defeated Zeromus and turned it into a Memoria Crystal, then planted it out in the Empty on the First under the supposition that doing so would hasten the aetheric rebalancing out there (beyond the immediate area around Eden) and restore life to the land. Golbez (Durante) started on the path to atonement and promised along with Zero to find another way to restore the Thirteenth to life, which may just happen on it's own over time if the First's Light imbalance corrects itself thanks to our actions. Zero bade us farewell until next time and that was that.

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Thank you! I had completely forgotten the part where we go back to the First. I had imagined it would be Zero as it is the only female character that isn't with us right now (and Alisaie is with Alphinaud so I imagine the wording would have been different if it was them).
But now I know Livingway is the likely candidate, it sure ties neatly with the photos on the moon.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

Thanks! I forgot the loporites were gendered lol. But then, the whole part on the moon post Zodiark is when I started to dissociate with the MSQ in Endwalker.

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Technically they're asexual, but "adopted the traits of one or more gender[s]" because they find the concept interesting.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

Thank you! I had completely forgotten the part where we go back to the First. I had imagined it would be Zero as it is the only female character that isn't with us right now (and Alisaie is with Alphinaud so I imagine the wording would have been different if it was them).

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I enjoyed Endwalker's base story well enough, but the IV adaptation was... predictable and uninteresting. Still, it was a highlight moment in that plot because it's where Gaia actually shows up in the MSQ (voiced lines and all!) if you've completed the Eden raids.

We don't actually have a way to contact Zero, so it couldn't be her, and more IV fanservice so soon after Endwalker went as hard as it did on that would be even weirder than whatever it is we've got going on with V in Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

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Honestly, I would be shocked if this 'ally' is anyone but Alisae. We know that the twins went to Garlemald to offer assistance and I can't really think of a better candidate to call us there with the dungeon being located there, especially since there's apparently a Void incursion.

My curiosity atm lies at the fact that the portal we see behind Enuo is, very notably, not the portals we've seen related to the Thirteenth at all. Instead, it looks like the portal we see in the Omega raids behind Exdeath and I think on the Halicarnassus fight as well. So, that makes me think of the FFV Void instead of the Thirteenth (which has largely been referred to as 'The Thirteenth' ever since the Zero arc instead of 'Void').
Combined with Enuo making an entrance, a superboss from FFV notable for being the original 'Master of the Void/Nothingness' before Exdeath, I wonder if we're gonna be seeing the introduction of a 'True Void', as in the dimension of nothingness. Maybe make it an Eldritch Horror themed thing and tie a potential Jenova appearance to it (and hopefully Ivalice Ultima, as she is an Alien as well).

As a hopeless FFX fanboy, I'd also love to see potentially Sin as part of such a hypothetical faction. Especially with how Sin could very easily be thematically inserted into a Shard-hopping related narrative...

As for the location of 8.0, I honestly can't speculate with confidence given how little crumbs we've been given to work with. I don't think we'll be using the Key right away to directly travel to other Shards yet. It's a very fresh plot thread and XIV doesn't tend to resolve plot threads immediately.
I desperately want to see Ilsabard be the main location, honestly. I feel like it's the perfect time to remove the clouds from the chuck-middle of the map after a decade... Given the current plot crumbs we have though, I could see more Shard 'bubbles' appearing on the Source. I'd probably prefer it over having more expansions fully dedicated to different Shards, especially ones we know next to nothing about.

I suppose ultimately, this is the first time we're truly in the dark when it comes to the next expansion. It offers me excitement and worry both, to be honest...

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Originally Posted by VulpinusRex

I suppose ultimately, this is the first time we're truly in the dark when it comes to the next expansion. It offers me excitement and worry both, to be honest...

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Nah, we had literally no idea where 8.0 was going before Dawntrail got revealed. We had a few suspects, but we had no actual information. Similarly, we've got some relatively solid guesses at this stage, I think everyone's correctly identified that there are a few threads they're setting up, it's just that nothing's concrete and we won't know who guessed right until later this month.

Also, I'd be remiss not to mention that during Stormblood, we thought next up was a Garlean expansion. ...and when Shadowbringers first got announced some people thought it was a time travel expansion because the information we got was so confusing and we didn't even know the shards were an option. I don't think we'll ever get that confused again, but we have absolutely been more confused than this before!

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Nah, we had literally no idea where 8.0 was going before Dawntrail got revealed. We had a few suspects, but we had no actual information. Similarly, we've got some relatively solid guesses at this stage, I think everyone's correctly identified that there are a few threads they're setting up, it's just that nothing's concrete and we won't know who guessed right until later this month.

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I don't know... The letter Krile received at the end of 6.4 post credits was a pretty clear indicator we'd be going to the New World. I remember I personally thought it would be both Meracydia and the New World, because there was also a scene where a dragon in the distance was responding to Azdaja's roar, and I thought it was somehow connected to Meracydia, but the New World part was always pretty evident

I do agree that Stormblood 4.4 was equally as mysterious, but since I wasn't really a part of the community back then I can't speak for the reaction.

This time around we truly have nothing. Based on 7.4 post credits alone, my best guess was that wherever we're going it won't be in the Ninth, and given that we have the key as a massive unexplored plot thread it would make sense that it would be in a different reflection(s). But nothing nearly as obvious as Krile's letter in 6.4.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Also, I'd be remiss not to mention that during Stormblood, we thought next up was a Garlean expansion. ...and when Shadowbringers first got announced some people thought it was a time travel expansion because the information we got was so confusing and we didn't even know the shards were an option. I don't think we'll ever get that confused again, but we have absolutely been more confused than this before!

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Not to mention the infamous Fanfest slide "it's time to take down the Garlean Empire !" in between pictures of Ahm Araeng and il Mheg or RakTikka! Shadowbringers was a very difficult expansion to guess right until it came out.

I would not be surprised if they did that again for 8.0 given how long we most likely will have to wait until the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Nah, we had literally no idea where 8.0 was going before Dawntrail got revealed. We had a few suspects, but we had no actual information. Similarly, we've got some relatively solid guesses at this stage, I think everyone's correctly identified that there are a few threads they're setting up, it's just that nothing's concrete and we won't know who guessed right until later this month.

Also, I'd be remiss not to mention that during Stormblood, we thought next up was a Garlean expansion. ...and when Shadowbringers first got announced some people thought it was a time travel expansion because the information we got was so confusing and we didn't even know the shards were an option. I don't think we'll ever get that confused again, but we have absolutely been more confused than this before!

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The Native South American styling of Krile's letter (6.4) was a solid hint, even if it wasn't cashed in until 6.55 telling us for sure after wrapping up the Void Arc. The "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that the plot cadence isn't lining up with what it used to; X.0 was the first two acts, X.1 - X.3 served as the denouement and "true ending" to an expack's story arc, and X.4 - X.5(.5) set up the next one. 6.X until 6.5.5 itself was a filler IV fanservice arc, while 7.4 provided no forward threads other than an ominous offscreen portent, giving Krile some character moments, and more IX fanservice (with an VIII GF as the Trial fight). Even 6.4 gave us a clearer hint!

Shadowbringers was a tough guess because 4.3 left no lingering plot threads to pick up other than continuing conflict with Garlemald. Even 4.4 and 4.5 did nothing to suggest what would be happening until the very end, while conflict with Garlemald dragged on and the Scions started dropping unconscious out of the blue. We didn't have a clear picture in-universe until 4.5.5 of how things were going to play out, even if we knew from announcements where they were going. And it turns out time travel was involved, just not on our part.

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Originally Posted by Cassar

I do agree that Stormblood 4.4 was equally as mysterious, but since I wasn't really a part of the community back then I can't speak for the reaction.

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People were just confused because like I mentioned 4.3 wrapped up the plot threads from Stormblood and didn't leave any dangling other than the looming conflict with Garlemald, so the inexplicable things going on (as of 4.4) threw people for a loop. Between that and the announcement details people were very skeptical of Shadowbringers before it released, believe it or not.

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Originally Posted by Cassar

This time around we truly have nothing.

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We truly don't have nothing. We've got several hooks even excluding the 7.5 previews; we have the key, we have Halmarut's ramblings, we have the knowledge of where Alphinaud and Alisaie have gone back to and why, and if you reach back and go 'they usually set up two expansions in advance' we have Void stuff from the Endwalker patches.

None of that is strictly locational, nor is it necessarily the thing that's coming up in the very next expansion, but it is enough to actually make predictions even before the Clyteum and Enuo start underlining a couple things. We do not have 'nothing', and in fact I'd argue we actually have more than we have historically, it's just more in terms of thematics and overarching concepts and threats more than concrete facts, places and people. We have a lot, but what we don't have is a huge sign saying 'MERACYDIA, NEXT LEFT'.

When the Shadowbringers teaser was released, some people thought it was Amdapor related.

For 8.0, we know that Enuo is the 7.5 trial. He's from FF5, a game about merging a world that had been split into 2. We could be starting to merge the reflections back into the source safely without calamities.

With Enuo being the trial, and there being a very obvious Void portal behind them in the screenshot, makes me think there will be an untangling of the facts from the fiction of enemies we fought in the Deltascape tier of the Omega raids. There definitely seems to be some Void/Rift stuff happening in the future.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

...and when Shadowbringers first got announced some people thought it was a time travel expansion because the information we got was so confusing and we didn't even know the shards were an option.

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You say that like it was a mistake, but it was a perfectly correct assessment that the then "mystery voice" must be from a time beyond our own, which leaves only two options: we time-travel or he time-travels.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

You say that like it was a mistake, but it was a perfectly correct assessment that the then "mystery voice" must be from a time beyond our own, which leaves only two options: we time-travel or he time-travels.

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Yeah, to clarify the 'time travel' assumption wasn't an out-there moonshot of a prediction, that was the result of people taking what little info they had and trying to shape anything out of it. You had the narration, you had figures that we'd only otherwise seen in Amdapor, and you even had Thancred saying that a place that looked an awful lot like Ul'dah had 'changed'. And hell, given the Alexander raids, time travel certainly seemed more theoretically plausible than shard travel. If I were the predicting type and actively following new info at the time, I probably would've reached for 'time travel' too.

People were wrong, but they were making best-faith guesses given a teaser that was kind of deliberately confusing that didn't really fit anything we were expecting at the time. Bringing it up here largely as perspective; we are not uniquely in the dark and uncertain about the upcoming expansion at this point, we have been WAY more confused than this.

EDIT: Also, I think it's genuinely very helpful and extremely funny to bring up the pre-Shadowbringers leadup, which feels like it's from a totally different planet. Cilia's right, people were not picking up what Shadowbringers was putting down at first, they were rightly skeptical.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

When the Shadowbringers teaser was released, some people thought it was Amdapor related.

For 8.0, we know that Enuo is the 7.5 trial. He's from FF5, a game about merging a world that had been split into 2. We could be starting to merge the reflections back into the source safely without calamities.

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The only method for merging the reflections back onto the Source we have right now is Interdimensional Fusion, which is hugely damaging to the Source (based on the fact even after Dawntrail concluded the lightning bubble around Yyasulani is still present, it may never recover or take so long it exceeds the lifetime of a Viera; I am honestly surprised, I assumed completing the arc would bring natural weather back). Assuming we did not do something like that and simply did a non-cataclysmic rejoining, it would wipe out the reflection and it's people in the process.

Barring some major thing out of left field, it's not happening because the worlds exist in the same space but different dimensions, and we currently have no way to bridge that (outside of small scale things like Halmarut's portals and the gate beneath the Skydeep Cenote, the latter of which currently only connects to Living Memory on the Ninth) that isn't damaging to one or both. They could introduce a way to do so and have it happen, but then we're just getting a repeat of Dawntrail's second act. We just got some Void action in 6.x; doing more so soon on such a big scale would be weird. I have a hunch it's more to do with the Rift (the interstitial dimension between the Source + reflections we traverse when traipsing from one to the other) but at that point it becomes even more of an unknown, since we have absolutely no clue how that place works. At least with the reflections we've settled on "elementally devastated variant of a legacy title's world, usually with some bizarro things for spice." (Well, aside from the First.)

And that's even assuming Enuo is actually the MSQ trial boss, which is more likely than not but we've gotten curveballs before (unadvertised Varis EX in Bozja, both the Magus Sisters and Anima advertised as trial bosses but being early game dungeon bosses). Given the Occult Crescent is already a V fanservice vehicle it could be tied to that instead. Unlikely, but not implausible.

Plus we've got oodles of V fanservice already; it's probably got the bronze medal overall, behind the Ivalice setting and III. Not impossible, just unlikely by my measure (and not something I'm all that interested in regardless).

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, to clarify the 'time travel' assumption wasn't an out-there moonshot of a prediction, that was the result of people taking what little info they had and trying to shape anything out of it. You had the narration, you had figures that we'd only otherwise seen in Amdapor, and you even had Thancred saying that a place that looked an awful lot like Ul'dah had 'changed'. And hell, given the Alexander raids, time travel certainly seemed more theoretically plausible than shard travel. If I were the predicting type and actively following new info at the time, I probably would've reached for 'time travel' too.

People were wrong, but they were making best-faith guesses given a teaser that was kind of deliberately confusing that didn't really fit anything we were expecting at the time. Bringing it up here largely as perspective; we are not uniquely in the dark and uncertain about the upcoming expansion at this point, we have been WAY more confused than this.

EDIT: Also, I think it's genuinely very helpful and extremely funny to bring up the pre-Shadowbringers leadup, which feels like it's from a totally different planet. Cilia's right, people were not picking up what Shadowbringers was putting down at first, they were rightly skeptical.

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A lot of the confusion came from the fact 3.x's "Warriors of Darkness" subplot established that travel across the reflections necessarily required physical death ("shedding of the flesh" or somesuch), so travelling across them seemed impossible. Indeed, Alexander established time travel (and time loops!) as a possible thing but Shadowbringers' plot broke that rule (for the WoL alone and out of Doylist necessity, but still). How were we to expect an adventure on a parallel world we had no way to get to and the metaphysics of the setting prevented travelling there?

All we have right now is Halmarut's dialogue with Mica Doll Calyx, which tells us nothing other than "badness is coming." 4.4 really did have more hints, what with the localized deployment of Black Rose, the deaspected crystals Y'shtola found mirroring others from before the Calamity, and the Scions' souls being spirited away by a mysterious voice that left their bodies comatose. We just didn't know how all that led forward until 4.5.5, and it didn't fit together until very early in Shadowbringers itself.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

I am honestly surprised, I assumed completing the arc would bring natural weather back.

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If they brought natural weather back, it would be clear how much of Heritage Found is just "Shaaloani again with gloom".