Actual lore regarding the current civilizations on Meracydia (potential spoilers)

[LystAP]

Meracydia is interesting since the Rogue and Arcanist quests also mention some sort of black market slave trading going on down south. Given how slavery works, I'm thinking there's a few settlements where slavery is legal. Originally, I thought south meant Thavnair, but since slavery doesn't seem to exist there, perhaps the slaving vessels are heading further south to Meracydia to sell their cargo.


If there is some sort of slaving polity down there, they could be the baddies for the next few expansions now that the Empire is gone.

[SilverArrow20XX]

I hope the New World isn't colonial themed.
We already had that with Adoulin in XI.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Meracydia is interesting since the Rogue and Arcanist quests also mention some sort of black market slave trading going on down south. Given how slavery works, I'm thinking there's a few settlements where slavery is legal. Originally, I thought south meant Thavnair, but since slavery doesn't seem to exist there, perhaps the slaving vessels are heading further south to Meracydia to sell their cargo.


If there is some sort of slaving polity down there, they could be the baddies for the next few expansions now that the Empire is gone.

They might not necessarily be baddies. Uldah still has slaves iirc.

[Teno]

Snip

Thanks for the FF16 spoiler.

[RyuDragnier]

Not really a spoiler considering that was concept art from last year, and the game won't be released until next year.

[Cleretic]

I hope the New World isn't colonial themed.
We already had that with Adoulin in XI.

I've got bad news for you about Limsa's story content since Shadowbringers' patches.

[Erendis]

Now wouldn't that just be a twist, for Meracydia to in fact be the most technological country on the planet.

What if... Wakanda?

[Beytran70]

I'd be surprised if there weren't major political powers at play in both Meracydia and the New World that we've simply yet to see much influence from.

The onset of the Final Days and its aftermath might be what gives them a push to start interacting with the outside world...for better or worse.

That would be kinda funny imo, although I don't know if the Final Days actually were bad enough to have reached places like Meracydia as well. All the other regions of the world get destroyed but all of a sudden we've got a new Dragon Empire or something out of the lost continent and they've got Allagan railguns attached to their wings because the Final Days didn't touch them and now it is their time.

[LystAP]

They might not necessarily be baddies. Uldah still has slaves iirc.

Well, they're not officially 'slaves'. More like indentured servants, since they want to play nice with Limsa. This seems to have gotten better since the liberation of Ala Mhigo as well. We haven't seen the bad slavers yet. The ones that Limsa tries to intercept.

Meracydia would be an opportunity to introduce the bad slavers. Perhaps a reference to the GoT slaver cities. We already got the Dotharl/Dothraki reference in the Steppes.

[Cleretic]

What if... Wakanda?

Honestly, I'd be far less interested in this than in a more 'low-level', tribal-focused story and setting. We've had high-tech cities and regions before (hell, we've had them so often that Stormblood is the only expansion that doesn't have one), but we have very few in a more low-end tribal focus.

I've always felt like that's often a pretty thinly-served aesthetic in games like this. Over time things build up to look bigger and more impressive to the point where we get to high-tech or hyper-mystical stuff, but this leads to leapfrogging over the more interesting 'small-scale' aesthetics like tribalism. You typically don't start with that, and then you move past that, so very rarely does a game go back to that. We got the Ravel Keeper gear in Shadowbringers, and... that's about it.

So yeah. I'm more interested in them doing more authentic African, Central American, Polynesian, or various First Nations historical aesthetics more than I would be in 'it turns out Meracydia is Wakanda'.