Thank you, Yoshi P & Co.

I'm not normally one to go down the cheesy road of posting these kinds of things but I really feel compelled to. Heavensward is incredible and leaves 2.x in the dust.

-Every new zone I unlock is impossibly more vast and impressive, and beautiful to look at than the last.
-Same with the dungeons, they just get increasingly more incredible. Last I did was The Vault, reminds me of Dark Souls - enemies and all. Bosses were a nice step up too :P
-The MUSIC. Holy crap. I don't even know what else to say here, me and friends have been humming various versions of the Dragonsong theme for days. The Bismark music isn't what I expected at all but in a great way. Definitely a standout feature, Soken poured his heart into this and it shows. And not just the music, all the sound effects like the thrilling "whoosh" sound when landing from flight :P
-The story. 2.X is nothing in comparison, it also truly feels like a main FF storyline. For an MMO to have a plot of this quality is something to be proud of.
-The difficulty. Apart from Coil, not much in 2.X really felt taxing enough imo. Now the wild enemies are a lot more hardy and mean (even those cute fluffy ones in Sea of Clouds), and the dungeons - so far - feel just right. Also with all the new skills it feels hard to call any job brain-dead easy (though they do vary between each other, of course).
-A few data center issues, but honestly it's been a relatively smooth launch!

There's a plethora of sidequests that can get very tiresome, but at least they're more streamlined than in ARR. I feel I'm a lot more likely to remember the hunters of Dravanian Forelands than...whoever was around Western Thanalan.

Generally, you can just tell that the dev team absolutely gave this expansion their all, and the quality dwarfs ARR so much. I just wanted to take some time out of my 4-day no-life marathon to acknowledge that work. [/cheese]

I have some annoyances with regard to the bard WM skill and some of the zones can be quite frustrating to get around from a level design perspective but overall I have enjoyed HW so far, I do think should of added more high quality side content (like new episode of Hildibrand within it would of been nice) and more trials to HW. The main story is very good so far but I dislike some of the VO changes to specific characters. I am only level 57 and have been for the most part just doing all the quests in each zone including the story unlocks of dungeons and a single trial so far, completely cleared only half the zones in HW also which means I haven't experienced all of it by quite a long margin. I also have yet to work on leveling the new classes too and I am looking forward to enjoying leveling and working on especially the extension of crafting, gathering classes. Overall in general though it's been good and do not regret pre-ordering the CE version of it.

I'm sure Hildebrand quests will be coming in a future patch, as the expansion's release is focused more on the main story than anything else. Side story quests fill in the gaps when you've already done the multitude of sidequests that unlock as you level, so there's no real need for them just yet.

But I agree with the OP, this has been amazing. The first time you fly is so gratifying, and when you are finally able to soar around the Sea of Clouds, it's amazing at just how much you couldn't see/gain access to from the ground.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aeliott

I feel I'm a lot more likely to remember the hunters of Dravanian Forelands than...whoever was around Western Thanalan.

---

Thats where the Sahagins are >=D!! You are welcome!
... no wait... huh?

Story really got a step up tho.

Actually, I think it's a bloody terrible expansion, the developers should be hanging their heads in shame with the amount of gates they have added for their content.

Want to get items with DoL? Got to level DoW/M
What to get scripts? Got to level DoW/M
Want to fly? Got to complete random quests (after the complaints from 2.0 about a lack of quests for 2nd job), and you don't get your flying bird till the final MSQ when you LEAVE the zone.
Exception to that is Moghome, where instead of "look on the ground in this huge circle for moogles" its "hey, z axis too!"

No beta test, that's fine, the client itself is stable, but they really should have done a "fun" test, being forced to level DoW/M, to unlock zones, to continue with DoL/H (something in the future that won't be an issue, rich people can just buy the crap off the MW) is not fun, heck, I can't even do my level 54 GSM quest because the bloody fish isn't on the MW, probably locked behind another stupid gate.

Oh, and my very first class when playing this game (1.0 Alpha, Beta and Retail) was Fisher, so I don't appreciate being shoe horned into DoW/M because, well, for no reason at all.

Oh, and the mobs, not any more difficult, they just hit harder and have more HP, so take longer to kill, and give so little XP they may not bother.

And quests, instead of "kill 4 mobs for an item" it's "a mob may have an item, kill several until you get the quest item", yeah, that's so much fun.

Big red circle find things, most enjoyable, fun, amazing quests in the game, said no person ever.

This xpac has a bucket load of negatives, running out of quests when you need several hundred K xp? (I'm currently needing 600k) so having to go do fates, or hope my duty is up, yeah, that's fun and engaging. Overall I'd give it a 2/10, and that is being very, very generous.