Friends of mine, new to the game, becoming discouraged by STORY QUESTS

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I for one hope there isn't ever some kind of shortcut put into the story.
That's just wrong. CS skipping is one thing but to just ignore all the questing before endgame is not cool.

They really have to. Demanding new players to play through the massive ARR storyline and a whole expansion thereafter just to get into another expansion would be borderline suicidal on the business end of things. People simply won't do it. Unlike most MMOs, FFXIV has such an enormous amount of story content it will push away players not interested if you force them to press through all of it.

[bass9020]

They really have to. Demanding new players to play through the massive ARR storyline and a whole expansion thereafter just to get into another expansion would be borderline suicidal on the business end of things. People simply won't do it. Unlike most MMOs, FFXIV has such an enormous amount of story content it will push away players not interested if you force them to press through all of it.

They have already talked about making the next expansion not tied to HW. But with everything HW gave idk how they will handle the features added.

[Nici]

They really have to. Demanding new players to play through the massive ARR storyline and a whole expansion thereafter just to get into another expansion would be borderline suicidal on the business end of things. People simply won't do it. Unlike most MMOs, FFXIV has such an enormous amount of story content it will push away players not interested if you force them to press through all of it.

They have already talked about making the next expansion not tied to HW. But with everything HW gave idk how they will handle the features added.

Yeah as bass says they had already mentioned it in a live letter or maybe it was in a Q&A (can't really recall where i had read about it)...about having new players "skip" the HW expansion, i understand why they need to do this but at the same time it seems a little sad new players won't get to experience the great story lines we have already experienced.

[TankHunter678]

They have already talked about making the next expansion not tied to HW. But with everything HW gave idk how they will handle the features added.

I believe what they will do is have the next expansion take place at the same general time period of HW.

Lore wise there are bound to be periods where things are relatively stable but otherwise lack activity for the WoL, going by them having the player leave Ishgard to go handle things back in Ul'dah and the other city states.

Then in the expansion after that the two storylines will merge.

They will have it setup so that if you go through the next expansion after HW the dialog is different and the scenes different. As well as change HW so that if you go through the other storyline first the dialog and scenes will be slightly different. Both expansions will probably start with the arrival at Ishgard.

When it comes to the major players of the two storylines they will be too busy managing things in their area to be able to go help the WoL in the other area. We will probably get someone to replace Alphinaud as the companion for the non HW storyline.

It will be like those sections of the story where you need to go follow to separate but linked sections of the main story. One example being the two MSQ chains that lead you into Falcon's Nest/Camp Cloudtop at the same time early into HW. In the end both expansions will link into the expansion beyond them.

[Niwashi]

They really have to. Demanding new players to play through the massive ARR storyline and a whole expansion thereafter just to get into another expansion would be borderline suicidal on the business end of things. People simply won't do it. Unlike most MMOs, FFXIV has such an enormous amount of story content it will push away players not interested if you force them to press through all of it.

It's true that they have to allow people to play the next (4.0) expansion without finishing Heavensward, but it's not because of the amount of gameplay involved. It's because many players getting into an MMO will buy the base game and latest expansion. A few hard-core fans may buy all the expansions in between, but once there are several out, that can't be relied on. It will be commonplace for players to only have ARR and 4.0 unlocked, with no access to Heavensward because they haven't bought it. SE can't exactly get away with telling everyone they're not allowed to play the 4.0 expansion they've bought until they pay extra to also buy the 3.0 expansion.

The only way to get around that would be to decide that once 4.0 is released, 3.0 no longer counts as an expansion and becomes part of the base game, or to decide that purchase of 4.0 automatically includes access to 3.0, and so on with later expansions, so 5.0 would include both 3.0 and 4.0 for free, and so on. SE would be losing out on a lot of money from expansion purchases if they decided to do either of these, so I really can't see that happening.

With their only choices being to give 3.0 away for free, or to not require it, it's not surprising that they're not going to be requiring it.

They have already talked about making the next expansion not tied to HW. But with everything HW gave idk how they will handle the features added.

Well, presumably most of the features tied to 3.0 will remain tied to 3.0. You'll be able to move directly from 2.0 to 4.0, but would be giving up your chance to play an Astrologian or to run Alexander or to gain reputation with the Vanu Vanu, and so on. Players without 3.0 still wouldn't be able to even enter Ishgard, just like we can't now. It's hard to say whether there would or would not be an alternate chance in 4.0 to unlock flying mounts. (My guess is that there will, but it will depend on how necessary flight is in the new 4.0 regions.)

Yeah as bass says they had already mentioned it in a live letter or maybe it was in a Q&A (can't really recall where i had read about it)...about having new players "skip" the HW expansion, i understand why they need to do this but at the same time it seems a little sad new players won't get to experience the great story lines we have already experienced.

They have to make it possible to skip the first expansion (or any individual expansion), but that doesn't mean it will disappear entirely. Players who purchase it would still be able to play through the whole expansion and its full storyline (though they might do so either before or after they've played other expansions).

They will have it setup so that if you go through the next expansion after HW the dialog is different and the scenes different. As well as change HW so that if you go through the other storyline first the dialog and scenes will be slightly different.

That might be possible, but would become increasingly complicated once several expansions are out and at any point in the Heavensward storyline, a player might be at any point in the 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0 expansions. I expect they'd more likely handle it like comparing the class quests to the MSQ. Story-wise, the level 50 Culinarian quest occurs at 2.0, but players who did it after 2.55 had an issue with the Sultana's involvement in that quest. I think it's likely that the storyline of 3.0 will conceptually occur prior to the storyline of 4.0 regardless of which order a given player does them in.

(Another MMO I played a lot prior to this one works this way. Like FFXIV, LOTRO is also a heavily story-centric MMO, but its main story is divided into many chapters. Most chapters can be individually started or skipped, but if you play a later chapter and then go back and play an earlier chapter, you get the story out of order.)