Preferences for a new world in 6.x, 7.x and beyond

[RyuDragnier]

Right, even if 6.0's story ends with Zodiark and Hydaelyn destroying each other (and Zenos and Fanforced), there are still four named Ascians unaccounted for, so I'm fully expecting them to make some kind of appearence causing trouble for the world, especially as the cycle of rejoinings is broken and their 'one true god' is destroyed.

You mean in Pandaemonium, which is confirmed to be the new 8 man raids and confirmed to be linked to Lahabrea? If I were a betting man, that's where the rest of the Ascians will be dealt with, assuming they don't decide to be like Gaia and "retire" from it. We have 3 tiers, and assuming Lahabrea does not come back to life, that's 4 fights that can be done in the final tier. Or if one of them is helping us and wants to "retire", that's an Ascian destroyed at the end of every Tier.

[Enkidoh]

Possible, but given their importance in the story I don't see them all suddennly going all zealous and wanting to attack the WoL en masse in the one place and will probably start doing their own thing off in the shadows again, and will continue to be a vague prescence - after all, we're already seeing that with Fannybag declaring "I'm free of the Unsundered's influence, I couldn't care less about restoring the Ancient world, all I want it is to DESTROY EVERYTHING MWHAHAHAHA".

Also we don't know if Pandemonium will bring back Lahabrea, at least completely - a bit of ambigious artwork doesn't mean much (and remembering what Pandemonium was in FFII and IX, it sounds like to me that it will basically be just thematically Palace of the Dead for Ascians - a purgatory where we get to kill bad guys again but really doesn't mean much more for the wider world).

Or I could be completely wrong and it's something completely different no one has considered yet.

We'll see either way soon enough.

[FrightfulNight]

I know everyone is wishing to go to other shards and do time travel and go to the New World and Meracydia but right now we Still have clouds over Islabard, We still have so many locations in both Orthard and Islabard. Actually right now an Islabard expansion makes the most sense since it most likely is going to receive the most damage in the End of days already recovering from a massive civil war with the Garleans and now the final days without any large alliances like Eorzea has or even Orthard has with the New Eastern Alliance.

Having us go there and deal with the fallout of the final days and the fall of the Garlean Empire would actually be a cool idea for 7.0 plus it would allow a more down to earth and human expansion after the literal end of the world. I also do not buy that all of the Garlean forces are just conveniently defeated off screen by the civil war as there are various legions still unaccounted for, if that is really the case then that is incredibly lazy writing. The collapse of the Garlean empire however could allow for new factions perhaps with some former Garlean ties to rise to fill the power vacuum in Islabard and lend to a who do you trust expansion with new factions you know nothing about and don't have any preexisting biases toward leading to very mortally grey conflicts. Meanwhile it currently makes very little sense to go gallivanting off to Meracydia or the New World or other Shards or using time travel while Three Continents, namely Islabard and probably Orthard as well will need help recovering from these cataclysmic events.

I am not opposed to these places all together, in fact i think you can squeeze to back to back expansions out of the New World since if i recall there are two continents there as well similar to there being a North and South America, i just think we should wait until after we have a completed map of the three continents first.

[Apothecarist]

I feel that the more logical step would be to think of what would pose a greater threat, than Ascians and super primals like Hydaelyn and Zodiark, before we can decide where to go. While i would very much like to explore more of the "known" world, i find it difficult to justify the power creep that would happen in these areas without using concepts like time travel and parallel worlds. What would caused normal creatures to be stronger than current L80 super beings? I know this is a fallacy common to most MMOs, and levels may not be the best gauge of power, but i think what FFXIV has so far has been plausible. Also i dont think that we will ever be free of the current lores and norms. They will just fall into the background and may show up as side quests/scenarios. However, they will no longer be the driver of the main story.

With the above and what we know from present lore, possible leads could be,

Meracydia - How were the Meracydian able to fight against the Allagan who were orchestrated by the Ascian?

New World - Pretty much an unknown but can imagine a prehistoric area where only the strongest of inhabitants can survive and super malevolent beings are present

Other super primals - Similar power level with Hydaelyn and Zodiark but with different modus operandi

Aliens - Beings similar to and stronger than Midgarsormr and Omega. What forced Midgarsormr to flee Dragonstar?

True Gods - The Twelves (assuming they really are gods), Beings capable of destabilizing creation magic and causing the calamity

Cosmic Beings - Parallels from FF franchise, Origin/primordial gods, Creators, Lavos/Time Devourer type beings, God-killers

[MercuryD]

I'm a simple man: give me more primals and summoning and I shall continue to be hooked.

[Kesey]

The major loose ends right now I think are:
- Dalmasca... but they'd have to make the Ivalice Raids and Bozja mandatory in order to build an expansion around that, and I don't see that happening;
- The Thirteenth, which would require Warring Triad, the ShB Role Quests and subsequent Void Quests, which would still not be as arduous as Bozja, at least, imo;
- Meracydia has been namedropped a lot (in the Coils of Bahamut, Warring Triad, most recently in the MSQ), and we have the cooperation of the Dragons now too, so it's not out of the question... but whatever story they set there would essentially be entirely new;
Then again they could do...
- Something completely out of nowhere, like ShB was;

The Dalmasca situation was recently addressed in an interview. It seems that Bozja was a pivot from Dalmasca, as they originally wanted the story to continue there, but those working on the Bozja story were unaware that they planned to fix tempering in post-6.0. So a continuation of that story plus a visit to Dalmasca is still very much in the future and they implied a few more plot points need to be covered before picking that thread back up.

And the misinformation about the ending with Lyon and the battlefield notes was intentional too. That was done to create speculation for the future.

[Kesey]

This. The talk of using time travel again also suggests that – as essentially a consumer rather than creator of the story, if I'm understanding it right – Yoshida has failed to grasp just how difficult it was to implement that time and dimensional travel and the costs that it placed on the characters: the work of generations and a huge personal sacrifice for G'raha, not to mention the implication that he went alone because nobody else could survive the trip.

He sounds like he's just looked at it and gone "cool, we have time travel now. We can do more plots with that."

Idk. Yes time travel narratives can get messy, but I think we have a few potential ways it could be used without messing things up.

My first thought was just throwing the WOL into the lifestream and have them wake years in the future. They could make new models for the twins, now all grown up and the other scions look older as they bring their friend back to face the new real threat.

Another one is traveling back to Allag, which has already laid the ground work as the nodes on Ayzs Lla who recognize your soul as a citizen of Allag. I think the intention is that you were reincarnated during the time of Allag as part of the Azem soul thing, but they could always make you go there physically too. It also be kind of fun and ironic to bring along G'raha who could sit at the center of another time travel plot.

[KageTokage]

I'm praying we don't start resorting to time/interdimensional travel until we've actually explored more of what the Source still has to offer.

Though at the same time, I'm not really sure what kinds of significant threats could arise aside from primals given that the threat of both the Garleans and the Ascians will be largely defused by the time 6.0 is done...presumably.

[Kesey]

I'm praying we don't start resorting to time/interdimensional travel until we've actually explored more of what the Source still has to offer.

Though at the same time, I'm not really sure what kinds of significant threats could arise aside from primals given that the threat of both the Garleans and the Ascians will be largely defused by the time 6.0 is done...presumably.

I think the closed borders of Hingashi presents a great way to unfold a new threat. If they are so intent with keeping people out, by rules of jrpgs, they are clearly hiding some sort of problem. A problem that can be revealed to be apart of a bigger new threat that was impossible when Hydaelyn and Zodiark were alive.

Plus we'd have a Japan culture expansion in ff14, which is a win on all fronts.

[RyuDragnier]

Possible, but given their importance in the story I don't see them all suddennly going all zealous and wanting to attack the WoL en masse in the one place and will probably start doing their own thing off in the shadows again, and will continue to be a vague prescence - after all, we're already seeing that with Fannybag declaring "I'm free of the Unsundered's influence, I couldn't care less about restoring the Ancient world, all I want it is to DESTROY EVERYTHING MWHAHAHAHA".

I don't think it's them wanting to attack the WoL en masse, so much as we stumble upon at least one of them, who knowingly or not leads us to Pandaemonium. Personally if I had my way, the remaining 4 would be the ones who'd rather be like Gaia and live out their own lives peacefully. I think it's time to retire the Ascian nonsense permanently, it's been getting boring having to deal with mustache twirling evil organizations.