A worry/rant about storylines till now (very very minor spoiler warning)

[Gardes]

FFXIV 2.0: Gaius von Balsar and project Ultima (aka seventh umbral era)
- We defeat Gaius and have this huge celebration (yay! again good end) but oh wait, sudden dragon roar. And what's this? Ascians aren't death and they're multiplying! Cliffhanger into next storyline.

I'm not sure what's the problem here? This story ended on a good note but another part of the story for our character has to be introduced. How do you want it to go? We celebrate, cutscene finish and then pretend some months have passed and we talk to an npc for no reason to trigger another cutscene where we hear the scream and see the ascian cutscene? What difference does it make? If anything that makes the flow just as weird as visiting minfillia after every patch.

[kyuven]

The Scions also seem to forget that they have with them the Warrior of Light. The same 'hero' who charged into battle against Primals, Ultima Weapon and even mighty dragons and survived. Yet they suddenly fear for YOUR safety when a couple of turncoats come for you. Let us live up to that name and fight our way out gods damn it.

This is the part that cheesed me off.
Otherwise, meh. It works.

[alfangel]

I like the Berserker

[Sanne]

I really hated the ending.

It is sad you felt like that.

To me it did make sense for my character to act as she did, while I did at times wanted to fight too, I knew this thing was too big for my char in this situation.
I really felt one with my char, while I did see some things my char didn't see. I can see it separated.

But my char isn't the hero type while the story puts her in that to me she always was a normal person with some special traits, but my char did well because of all the friends around her.

This is an ending and a beginning to me. To me the story was great and exciting while it did make sense to me.

But I guess if you really felt the hero it was annoying to watch things going like it did in this story.

[Gunspec]

Why must Hildebrand blast off again? Why couldn't he end the story standing on terra firma, happy and content? Curse you and your cliffhangers, SE! If you keep this up, I'll become desperate and...

cont. in Part 2, coming next fall

[Pinkie_Pie]

I just finished and I must say, I AM MAD, ALL THAT WORK, ALL THAT CRAP WE WENT THROUGH AND IT ENDED LIKE THAT. I"M NOT HAPPY NOT ONE BIT

[LineageRazor]

Cliffhangers may be an age-old literary tool to keep folks wanting more... BUT, they are not a necessary tool, as FFXI clearly shows. FFXI was a very successful game that thrived for over a decade. Every one of its expansions had a solid conclusion, none of this "tune in next time to continue the story!" stuff. Heck the base set storyline ended so pat that when they added Rise of the Zilart, they actually had to retcon the ending before they could build off of it!

FFXI Base:
*Player defeats the Shadowlord*
Shadowlord: You have defeated me! I see now that my rage has done more harm than good, and I can now pass on in peace.
*Player leaves the castle, and all is well.*

FFXI Rise of the Zilart:
Lion: What? Did you honestly forget what happened AFTER you beat the Shadowlord?
*FLASHBACK: Archduke Kam'lanaut appears with his posse of Ark Angels and rips the Shadowlord's friggin' head off.*
Kam'lanaut: Mwahaha, you have done well, adventurer, but surely you never suspected I was EVIL! I will now use this head to do EVIL THINGS! Nothing can stop me now!
*The player is chucked out of the castle, and THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!*
Player: Silly me! I guess I totally forgot about all that HORROR! My bad!

Okay, so that wasn't the most graceful of sequel tie-ins - but the point stands that the base and each expansion had a self-contained story. Expansions sometimes picked up on elements from those previous stories (such as Odin's dark protocrystal showing up in the Chains of Promathia, but Odin himself not featuring prominently until the Treasures of Aht Urhgan - and then a surprise appearance later in Wings of the Goddess expanding upon his method of operation established in ToAU).

[Airget]

What I really think they should change is the super obvious plot twists, seriously starting with Nero barely disguising himself in the CT story there was a lot of other things that were so obvious it was almost stupid.

Nero had no need to disguise himself though, even when he introduced himself, he admitted that he came not as an enemy but rather as an observer one interested in the exploits of the tower. While he had ulterior motives truth of the matter is he didn't go as an enemy and had no need to hide himself since even had he tried Cid most likely would of seen through it with ease.

[Alberel]

I just finished and I must say, I AM MAD, ALL THAT WORK, ALL THAT CRAP WE WENT THROUGH AND IT ENDED LIKE THAT. I"M NOT HAPPY NOT ONE BIT

That's kind of the point though... just because people want 'happily ever after' endings doesn't mean every story should give them one. Judging by the popularity of the Game of Thrones TV series I'd say that these open disaster endings are actually proving more popular of late. I'll say it again though, since people still don't seem to understand: 2.55 is a climax within an ongoing series, it is NOT a conclusion because it's not meant to be. Just because other games have the story self-contained within each expansion I see no reason why FFXIV must do the same. SE already has the entire story planned out for years to come so this one story is going to cover several expansions.

With regards to the OP's point about new players having to buy the expansion to find out what happens next... I've never know any MMO ever that players didn't eventually have to buy every expansion for anyway so I don't see the relevance of this. What did you want them to do about the Ascians though? To conclude that story thread we would have to find out their entire endgame and fight all of the remaining 12 of them, the majority of whom we haven't even met yet, as well as likely confront Zodiark, a literal god. Any attempt to conclude the Ascian story in a single patch would have been absurdly rushed and nonsensical so it was fairly obvious we wouldn't get a resolution to that in the 2.x arc... not sure why you expected it.

[Kosmos992k]

Personally I feel we will continue to get "these type of endings" until we leave Eorzea. Since the over all arc of the good NPCs is to unite Eorzea as a whole, elements from previous patches/expansions are going to leak in as long as we stay in Eorzea. However I feel we will have closure once we can explore a new continent.

Except that the NPCs of Eorzea did not 'promote' us to warrior of Light, the 'mother crystal' - Hydaelyn - did. So it kind of seems to me that Eorzea may be only a small part of what Hydaelyn has in store for us. The next continent is on Hydaelyn's world, it seems likely that whatever evil doers reside there will be working against Hydaelyn in some fashion or another requiring the Warrior of Light to take action once more to defend the light of the crystal.

P.S. for a cliff hanger reference, folks should look a the old movie serials such as Flash Gordon (starring Buster Crabbe), these episodic series of short movies made a virtue of the cliff hanger. I love the way that people dismiss the cliff hanger as if it were obsolete, and that somehow open ended story telling is new. Story telling has existed since language enabled the telling of stories. The techniques of story telling have all been well established for millennia.