Where are we heading to next?

Ok, so the top theories of where we're heading to for 7.0+ would be either Meracydia or the Void/other shards. With 6.1 we got some mention of Meracydia and especially with the Void. (Seriously Y'shtola was starting to freak me out with how obsessed she was over this)
While I know that it's still far too early to be sure, but where are we going to head to next? I can't see how the story will be connecting us to Meracydia just yet, and I feel that the New World is still too early and we've heard barely anything about tit. But I don't see how we can go to the Void when it is just an empty void. The reason they could make the First work was because they still had that one continent with actual people surviving on it. Despite that it was in a dying land, they still had different environments and zones for us to visit... just enough that we had a whole story and they were able to add onto that with the Eden storyline.
But the void... there's nothing left of it but empty darkness and surrounded by void sent. I don't see how we can honestly have an entire expansion about it. Now, granted I think that it would be awesome and would love the chance to be able to go there if they could make it work... but unless some kind of city did manage to survive there or so many centuries... I don't see how we could have an entire expansion of the void. I was thinking that maybe the Void could be like the new Eureka or Bozja... but I thought that Corvos seemed more likely for that for Endwalker. Then I thought that while exploring parts of the 13th, the Golbez look-alike escaped with the fiends and settled down in Meracydia and we have to go after them. And the entire 7.0 expansion could be us fighting him and at the last we send him back to the Void where we learn the fate of Azdaja? But I honestly don't think that the archfiends would survive that long, I do think they are being set up for the new trial fights in 6.2 and onwards.
Sorry, I know my thoughts are all over the place, but what do you think? Are we going to the Void or Meracydia... or maybe someplace new?

So hear me out here.

What if the next patch launches the new dungeon immediately and it's into the 13th for an expedition.

We fight our way through 3 bosses, using Estinien, Y'shtola, and king (who will flex roll) only to run head long into Golbez, who reveals the missing dragon is his now and is a shadow dragon.

In an attempt to save our lives we are forbidden from going back, cutting off the storyline into 13th immediately.

My point here, is it is way too early to really tell as they can easily be doing this as a misdirect.

My vote, sitting here in a .1 patch, is that 7.0 will be Meracydia (and anyone that thinks that Meracydia being the expy for Africa means that we won't have vast city-states with giant castles and fortresses and complex kingdoms shows how small-minded they are) with some active Void Gates and/or other regions of Islabard as the other zones, with an off-chance of the New World. I think that anything set in the Void will not be a full expansion's worth - at most one of the zones for 7.0 if the resolution to the Void plot threads is kept for 7.0, or some instanced fights in the MSQ and a Four Lords from IV and Golbez themed Trial Series - which I wonder if the Trial Series this time will be optional or fully integrated into the MSQ.

Edit: Oh yes, I agree w/ Kesey. A Void-themed dungeon. Just not sure if 6.2 or not. The real question will be if the final dungeon of 6.5 will carry on the tradition of having Garlean enemies, or if we can finally put that long-running XIV trope to rest.

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My vote, sitting here in a .1 patch, is that 7.0 will be Meracydia (and anyone that thinks that Meracydia being the expy for Africa means that we won't have vast city-states with giant castles and fortresses and complex kingdoms shows how small-minded they are) with some active Void Gates and/or other regions of Islabard as the other zones, with an off-chance of the New World. I think that anything set in the Void will not be a full expansion's worth - at most one of the zones for 7.0 if the resolution to the Void plot threads is kept for 7.0, or some instanced fights in the MSQ and a Four Lords from IV and Golbez themed Trial Series - which I wonder if the Trial Series this time will be optional or fully integrated into the MSQ.

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That sounds awesome! But I can't help but hope that we will be able to go to the Void and take Vrtra along with us because I would love to travel with him and hopefully find a way to save Azdaja. I mean, a part of me really wants them to find a way to restore at least a part of the 13th, you know to give them something to work with? Here's a crazy theory I came up with though: I was watching Atlantis: The Lost Empire and in the beginning, a giant crystal was able to create a protective barrier to protect the people from the flood and slowly sank beneath the waves. What if, and I'm going into tin-foil hat territory, what if a city or nation was able to do the same and survive all these years beneath the darkness in a protective shell? They had been fighting against the Voidsent all that time but it's a losing battle? If they had something like that, then we would have a foothold and slowly be able to work our way out from there?

So the places that have opened up to us in this patch alone or are suggested to be opening up

1) The unexplored portions of the three brothers continent
2) The sea of stars (Nero is all over that, if he doesn't turn on the moon's hyperhopper engines just to see what happens I'll be surprised)
3) The New World
4) Meracydia
5) Other shards.

I suspect that we'll be dealing with the void primarily in this post game set.

Patch 6.2 will bring the first criterion dungeon. At the same time patch 6.1 prepares us to leap into the void. Coincedance? I think not...
Maybe the MSQ will introduce us to the relic content in which criterion dungeons will also play a role, but who knows?

Honestly I have to think that 7.0 would probably not be a Void focused expansion, even if it might have Void elements in the narrative.

I base this off of the 2.x patches, which I feel are the closest in terms of narrative structure: the chapter is done, and now we check for loose plot threads that we can build up into a new chapter. Which means the 2.1 and 6.1 patches are, in a way, noodling around by exploring the metaphysics of the setting: in 2.1 it was about the nature of Primals and how Good King Moggle Mog contradicted the existing beliefs (also Elidibus), and in 6.1 it appears to be the nature of interdimensional travel with a focus on the Thirteenth.

If we look at the subsequent patches, 2.2 was the arrival of the Doman refugees and the summoning of Leviathan, which didn't really impinge on Heavensward much, except for the news of the new Emperor (who turns up in mid-HW for a single scene). 2.3 was the brewing political conflict in Ul'dah and the summoning of Ramuh, resulting in Alphinaud creating the Crystal Braves, which was a prominent and yet not quite major part of Heavensward. 2.4 is when the Ishgard plot thread really comes into play, with Ysayle's first appearance, and 2.5 is famously Keeper Of The Lake, Nabriales, Steps Of Faith, and the Bloody Banquet.

So my speculation is the whole talk about exploring the Thirteenth and such will be either a relatively minor part of 7.0, akin to the Crystal Braves subplot in Heavensward, and some new development will send us to somewhere else in Etheirys that Emet-Selch had told us about. Popular guesses would be Meracydia or the New World (in that order of likelihood), but I'm also considering Aerghmus hanging around Limsa Lominsa talking about rumours from Aerslant.

The full exploration of the Thirteenth will either be conducted in 8.0 (or even 9.0), although I do think we'll manage to make significant progress in the 6.x patches, perhaps managing to establish a forward base. But then we'll either stall out, or be distracted by something more serious. If I may speculate even more wildly, perhaps we'll find Azdaja, but she gets tossed out the the Thirteenth onto the Source deep in Meracydia, and now we have to find her and rescue her.

I just hope whatever we do end up doing in the Void, the game will remember Cyella and the Adventuring proto-Scions gathered on the First and we get a humorous scene of Beq Lugg explaining that their porxie drones sent to investigate the Thirteenth for its current status (and survivors) caught footage of whatever we were up to in there.

I'm leaning towards 7.0 either being Meracydia or Ilsabard; the former possibly following on the current threads related to the void and the First Brood, and the latter to offer closure to the matter of the remaining Garlean legions and the overall political state of the continent following the Empire's fall.

Also, anyone who thinks Meracydia would be "dull" hasn't done much research into African countries. Several of them have European influences due to foreign settlers and I think the same is likely to hold true here given that it was mentioned that settlers from the north were what sparked the initial conflict that lead to Tiamat and Bahamut becoming entwined with the affairs of man.

And even if we ignore 'European' - there are more than enough cultural groups and past empires all across the African continent, be they West African and inspired by the Igbo, anything Bantu, Radz-at-Han's trading partner a coastal metropolis of white coral palaces inspired by Zanzibar, maybe in Northern Meracydia is the world's richest man from the equivalent of Timbuktu...

I do hope, however, that the Twelve are remembered in Meracydia specifically as a cadre of demons or evil gods, thanks to their association with the invading Allagans, no matter what Myths of the Realm reveal. Mostly because I'd think it hilarious. And a chance for remixes a la Eden or FFX-2's Dark Aeons.

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Originally Posted by Kesey

So hear me out here.

What if the next patch launches the new dungeon immediately and it's into the 13th for an expedition.

We fight our way through 3 bosses, using Estinien, Y'shtola, and king (who will flex roll) only to run head long into Golbez, who reveals the missing dragon is his now and is a shadow dragon.

In an attempt to save our lives we are forbidden from going back, cutting off the storyline into 13th immediately.

My point here, is it is way too early to really tell as they can easily be doing this as a misdirect.

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I think the Void will be our new Trial series. 4 Elemental Fiends, and Golbez. We fight Earth/Water first, then we fight Wind, then we fight Fire in a solo instance (since he's all about duels), and then we fight Golbez for the final trial.

We may be a ways off from getting a clue if one of Yoshi-P's recent interviews is anything to go by.

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On to what extent the 6.x story will connect to the 7.0 story: “Well, if it doesn’t show hints you can’t connect it to what comes next. That said, 4.x didn’t connect much to 5.0, so it depends on the circumstances. I think this is a benefit of being a live service title, we can adjust the script depending on everyone’s reactions. I’m starting to think up imagery for the 7.0 trailer, but I don’t know what to make of it yet. But you can tell from my expression, ‘he’s having fun making something’. Around the middle of 6.x you might be thinking 'Wha-? What?', and you won’t be able to imagine 7.0 yet, so please look forward to it."

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I'm honestly kind of worried about that statement because it suggests the story is going to be veering off into completely foreign territory as opposed to visiting well-established locales people have been wanting to see.

If I had wager a guess we might going to another shard sooner then we expected, though I suspected that might be the case after they mentioned there was some additional role the moons of the shards had to play.

Yes, I'd rather they made story with consistent lore rather than try to "subvert expectations" all the time. It did not work all that great in EW.

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Originally Posted by Erendis

Yes, I'd rather they made story with consistent lore rather than try to "subvert expectations" all the time. It did not work all that great in EW.

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Shadowbringers was arguably further out from left field than Endwalker but it's still the most popular expansion.

It's not even just ShB and EW, they've been winging it this whole time. Major plot stuff we do know that changed on the fly is how they scrapped the original ARR plan for the Ascians during 3.x and Hydaelyn wasn't planned to be Venat from the start. I also remember that Yoshi-P mentioned at a fan fest leading into ShB that they were looking at dangling plot threads and just decided to pull the one that involved an alternate dimension and a whole lot of exposition that had basically no prior basis in lore up to that point.

Yoshi-P also said that stuff that is happening now will lead to 7.0, but considering how wild 5.0's entire premise was from everything else that came before it, that will have to remain to be seen. Technically our friends' souls being sucked out one by one led to us going to the First, but that wasn't exactly obvious to us at the time and little did we know that a bunch of coma patients in our HQ and badly timed headaches would lead us to a world filled with lightsent that Godfilia only paused destruction on and we would end up on the bottom of the sea in a benevolent whale's air bubble around a gussied up Ascian city where where the Garlean Emperor tells us that we were best friends 12,000 years ago and that we were on the Ascian leadership committee in another life.

As much as I like lore in general, I've long since given up an idea of consistency and in the end I'd rather have something wild but interesting that keeps me entertained regardless of what it breaks in the meantime. For better or worse, the lore here in XIV is used as a tool for world-building rather than as a sacred bible and the writers don't let it get in the way of the story they want to tell.

If the writers didn’t want to try to subvert expectations, we would have probably had a different 5.0 than the one we got. It probably would have continued where we left off in Stormblood and we would have continued to push the Garleans and continue war and liberation while we off the remaining Ascians one-by-one. That would have been a story I’m sure a lot of people would have wanted but I’m not convinced it’s the one it needed. Shaking things up, throwing us somewhere unexpected, and developing the cast into a core group of Main Characters instead of “these are the few we care about this expansion and the rest are on missions”, went a long way. The heroes reflect their villains and any protagonist is only as good as the antagonist and I feel as though they did better in that regard than with Lahabrea, Gaius, Thordan, Zenos, and Yotsuyu.

EW had some good and some bad. I’m glad they finally stopped splitting the narrative. For a lot of other things, eh I guess you can’t win them all and it was going to be a struggle to follow up on ShB and conclude the whole thing in 1 patch anyway.

Can I get some citations on them basically winging it? Because I remember that the rehtoric of the fanfests was that 'this is where it has all been leading too' and in my play, that seems to have held up, it's WAY more coherent than many other long running mmo stories.

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

Can I get some citations on them basically winging it? Because I remember that the rehtoric of the fanfests was that 'this is where it has all been leading too' and in my play, that seems to have held up, it's WAY more coherent than many other long running mmo stories.

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They’ve been saying this for a long time when they described before how they come up with the story. But this is from their interview with Famitsu last Feb or March:

Ishikawa:

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“It’s easy to think we planned it out in advance, but in truth, that’s wrong,”

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Yoshi-P:

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“Even back during A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and Stormblood, it was said, ‘We don’t have detailed lore yet for what the Ascians’ goals are, so let’s just have them be doing bad stuff in the background,’”

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It’s easier to write a long-form story when you have a vague idea of where you’re headed, but don’t put too much detail into it and leave a lot open-ended and sprinkle in a bunch of “mysteries” that are mysteries to you as well so that when you get around to solving them, you can make it look like it was supposed to be that way the whole time.

FFXIV's story and world is now facing several challenges due to the total collapse of its main opposing supernatural forces, Hydaelyn and Zodiark/the Ascians, combined with a cast that has now become stagnant. Seeing as how so far they have opted to not introduce new cast members, it appears that we will be stuck with the Scions who I do not believe will be able to carry the story if it goes somewhere too far removed from the next point of interest, the Void.

It is possible to tolerate an expansion with the Scions exploring the Void because the Void itself is interesting, being a dark fantasy world with a haunting beauty to it. They wasted no time in trying to sell us on it in 6.1, and given the potential strength of the setting even stale characters like Y'shtola may even find a way to redeem themselves by actually *doing things* there instead of more slice of life and meme moments.

This does not hold for what little is known of Meracydia at this time, and I do not believe that the fantasy land of hippos and kangaroos will make for a good expansion setting. Final Fantasy players come to the franchise for a variety of reasons but *that* isn't one of them. I posited the following question in another thread and no one was able to provide a reasonable answer: What on earth are the Scions supposed to do to keep me entertained in fantasy Australia/Africa?

A decent setting and antagonist faction can make up for a lackluster main party, but given a setting that doesn't click with the Final Fantasy crowd and a main cast that is no longer capable of further growth, I have to ask what kind of story, if any, remains sticking around for? The Scions at least can enter into plausible conflicts against the Voidsent. Again, this doesn't hold for Meracydia.

The Void was not even my first choice for 7.0's setting-I would much rather have visited the former Imperial territories in Ilsabard but given the choice between that and Meracydia then I'm choosing the Void without hesitation. Failing that, if the playerbase wishes with all their heart to go vacation in Australia with the Scions and leave the Void abandoned to the side, so be it, I only hope that FFXVI comes out sometime before then so I can get a decent Final Fantasy story again in a world that is as finely crafted as things were back in Heavensward, when the writing direction was more concerned about character depth and growth than shoving in more college living moments and finding a way to weave in an obligatory uwu sparkly eyes scene each patch.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Shadowbringers was arguably further out from left field than Endwalker but it's still the most popular expansion.

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The thing is they left a thread for the First hanging with the Warriors of Darkness plot in 3.4, so a lot of people were expecting it was going come up sooner or later.

Suddenly having the story drag us off to another shard with no significant build-up or foreshadowing would not feel nearly as satisfying to me; moreso when we've getting more and more bits of lore dropped about places like the New World, Meracydia, and Ilsabard as time goes on, which kindles interest.

I like this present story arc about the void specifically because it's been a constant looming threat since even the 1.0 days, so having it finally be brought to the forefront again via the MSQ was a long awaited payoff.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

This does not hold for what little is known of Meracydia at this time, and I do not believe that the fantasy land of hippos and kangaroos will make for a good expansion setting. Final Fantasy players come to the franchise for a variety of reasons but *that* isn't one of them. I posited the following question in another thread and no one was able to provide a reasonable answer: What on earth are the Scions supposed to do to keep me entertained in fantasy Australia/Africa?

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I largely tend to agree with your takes about things, but your repeated insistence that a continent inspired by Africa which has played host to some of man's grandest and most ancient civilizations as well as being host to a vast range of different climes and ecosystems would fail to provide intrigue where other settings haven't is a touch baffling to me. They at minimum have confirmed that there are Egyptian influences in Meracydia, and I'd personally love to see a FF take on their pantheon of gods whether as new primals or something else entirely and would also like to see a proper dunes desert as a zone.

As XIV's lore goes, it's believed to be the ancestral home of Miqo'te, is the home of Tiamat's brood, and is/was host to a colorful variety of beastman tribes who gave rise to the Warring Triad (Though Sophia seems to have been born of whatever faith the foreign settlers from the north held). I feel like there's ample potential for interesting storytelling there.

They are obviously trying to point us towards what Emet said (first the Bounty and the Twelve, Meracydia being brought up again, travel between shards etc.).
A nicely set up red herring. :P

While I think all of those are likely, I think there is another part of the XIV universe that could be worth exploring further: the interdimensional rift, which I wouldn't be surprised to see the new Omega questline elaborate on a little bit.
It goes a bit under the radar because Emet didn't mention it at all. However, the rift was brought up again in 6.1.
Finding how to travel between shards implies that we first need to understand the rift and how to travel through it without being pulled by another entity.
As I said in another thread, I think Azdaja could be stuck there, because she/they tried to open the portal right when it was closing, which could be why she didn't answer Vrtra's call in the Void.

To add to this: Yoshida said that Krile will be more important to the story going forward. And Krile is basically a FF5 reference, just like the Rift.
He also said Endwalker symbolizes a 'new dawn', which has me thinking about the Warriors of Dawn from FF5. + the student of Baldesion are now up and running.
Basically: I expect FF5 to inspire part of 7.0 as much as FF4 inspired part of 6.0.
Now that I say this, I also start wondering if Zenos' avatar is actually called Enuo, as another FF5 reference.

Something we didn’t get a lot of in SB (not exactly, as you’ll see) was a sort of “one to one” comparison between the Source and the First. While there were certainly comparisons to be made in the map, characters, and some geographic locations - there wasn’t a real narrative built up around how close or different they were physically. (More could be made about the whole light vs dark storylines, but I’m talking physical locations, not thematics).

Perhaps the next expansion will involve a new location on the Source, Meracydia for example - but also include the same locations in both the Void and a yet to be explored reflection? The gameplay/story could revolve around exploring three different versions of the same zones - and possibly even hopping between them in dungeons/raids/etc…

Maybe you need to cross a chasm in the Void, to get to a Temple in the Source - but the only bridge is in the reflection… if that makes sense?

The secrets to the Void get unlocked by exploring the corresponding locations in the Source - as well as a new reflection…

We get to expand the map on the Source, while also introducing creepy Void stuff - and get a whole new weird Reflection. The new reflection could be all ice themed, for example, while Meracydia is mainly warm - so when you hop from warm Meracydia, to the chilly reflection - the wildlife all become big shaggy prehistoric versions of the Source’s wildlife.

The new gameplay mechanic could be this fast hopping between reflections - which could be what Y’shtola is working toward.

Just a thought.

I'm betting we'll be setting up a camp in the Void like we did in the Empty for Eden, and that it'll be the Trial series through the patches leading up to 7.0.
Corvos will be the new Eureka/Bozja, and hopefully uncover that portion of the map.
7.0 will be Meracydia. A new continent with a full array of zones to explore.

The smaller locations mentioned by Emet will all just be dungeons.
Other shards, I don't think we'll do much with until later. Maybe 7.x patches.