Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[Skyborne]

Aye. He used the illusion of a meteor shower to awaken the Echo in people on the First. It's possible that someone could repeat that act. Hell, it's possible that the player could do it, given the means to create such an illusion.

Time for me to put on my white cowl and run around launching those meteor fireworks and watch all the Echoes awaken. I don't know if they would hear the whole 'hear, feel, think' spiel anymore though.

The Ancient world was likely extremely uniform and lacking the cultural diversity of the sundered world given that we know at minimum that they shunned behavior that would draw attention to oneself whether by violating their dress code or utilizing transformation magicks in the public eye, and it seemed like the bulk of their creative expression was limited to...well, their creation magicks.

I do wonder if other less open-minded Ancients would've found the notion of such a world more offensive then interesting.

I was kind of hoping we would learn about the other settlements that were out there, but unfortunately, Elpis was largely an MSQ setpiece and we were focused on one particular mission. Like that city across the sea from Amaurot mentioned in ShB, and the islands in the grape tale. It also seemed to me that the Amaurotines were more focused on diversity of thought, rather than diversity of appearance. Everyone was 'anonymous' and only their thoughts, talents, and ideas mattered. They also had plays and probably other kinds of arts, considering the seat of Altima was dedicated to it.

[Iscah]

The Word of the Mother said she failed seven times, and the Darkness grew stronger, but she never said anything about never having succeeded.

The thing is, it's an uneven game. On the assumption that she cannot re-sunder the shards now, she can only lose ground from here and the Ascians can only gain, because rejoining is permanent. The Ascians can succeed in rejoining a shard; Hydaelyn can only thwart them "for now" until they try again.

There is no "win" state for Hydaelyn except for wiping out all the Ascians so they can't perform further rejoinings, and that's still just preventing further losses.

[Rulakir]

Why assume she's having that reaction about all the grim things? Or even necessarily that it's what we would focus on in our stories?

We could describe places, friends, victories, experiences. The customs and cultures of people we visited. How beautiful it all was.

I'm sure our character could talk for hours about their experiences and only just skirt around the more tragic parts of the tale.

The funny thing is while listening to the tales of our Azem I thought, "Wow, they had a lot more fun than my WoL's ever had. I want to go on their adventures." Lighter moments in the MSQ are rather few and far between. All through HW & SB we were involved in wars. The First was essentially a post-apocalyptic world we were trying to save and nearly died in the process. I mean, Hell, if you were to ask me to share some of the funnier moments in FFXIV I'm honestly drawing a blank aside from the moogles in HW or the pixies in ShB.

[Rannie]

Depending on if you thought it funny or not there are the Hildebrand quests ^_^

Then there were those little side quests with running around with the Doman kids and their "adventures guild"

I see the msq ones as the more world shaking adventures that she had already kinda heard about and things like the side quests being what she was asking to hear about...

[RyuDragnier]

The funny thing is while listening to the tales of our Azem I thought, "Wow, they had a lot more fun than my WoL's ever had. I want to go on their adventures." Lighter moments in the MSQ are rather few and far between. All through HW & SB we were involved in wars. The First was essentially a post-apocalyptic world we were trying to save and nearly died in the process. I mean, Hell, if you were to ask me to share some of the funnier moments in FFXIV I'm honestly drawing a blank aside from the moogles in HW or the pixies in ShB.

If you're looking for lighthearted, MSQ is not the place, at least in FFXIV from what I can tell. However Side quests, tribe quests, and HILDIBRAND are FULL of those moments, everywhere from ARR up to now. HW I admit was a lot less lighthearted on that front (seriously, I don't remember much lighthearted in that expansion).

[Tehmon]

The main story quest is obviously not going to focus on lighthearted adventures, but there's something to be said about letting the story and the world breathe a little and not jump from one disaster to another. The state of urgency and impending doom has been present since 4.5, and there are very few moments afterwards where it has felt appropriate to slow down and enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer beyond MSQ.

But this is obviously more of a personal problem, as I feel really awkward and perhaps guilty leaving the MSQ at a point with a lot of tension and where the world is basically unraveling lol.

[Rannie]

The main story quest is obviously not going to focus on lighthearted adventures, but there's something to be said about letting the story and the world breathe a little and not jump from one disaster to another. The state of urgency and impending doom has been present since 4.5, and there are very few moments afterwards where it has felt appropriate to slow down and enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer beyond MSQ.

But this is obviously more of a personal problem, as I feel really awkward and perhaps guilty leaving the MSQ at a point with a lot of tension and where the world is basically unraveling lol.

Eh just remember the screw the world imma going fishing mentality can be very healthy!

Not to mention yummy if we go by wawalago and his drooling over the fish we catch....

Edit: ... yeah I'm at work with not much to do except this, play games on my tablet or sleep... sorry!

[Erendis]

Venat still very much considers sundered life "her people" -- they are souls of the Ancients in new form.

We are not her people. She keeps calling us "her children" just like Garuda did Ixal...

[MikkoAkure]

The funny thing is while listening to the tales of our Azem I thought, "Wow, they had a lot more fun than my WoL's ever had. I want to go on their adventures." Lighter moments in the MSQ are rather few and far between. All through HW & SB we were involved in wars. The First was essentially a post-apocalyptic world we were trying to save and nearly died in the process. I mean, Hell, if you were to ask me to share some of the funnier moments in FFXIV I'm honestly drawing a blank aside from the moogles in HW or the pixies in ShB.

Or like most mainline FF games, the plot is driven by world-shattering bad stuff happening and Azem lived in a time of peace until the very end. Plus, as an MMO, they need to keep the narrative and escalations going longer than they would in a stand-alone game. FFXI was the same way.

Moogles weren’t exactly the most loved part of HW either when it was relevant. Yoshi-P even said he hated one of the moogle quests and acknowledged that the playerbase as a whole started hating moogles in HW.

The EW equivalent of “breather moment” like the moogles and pixies would be the bunny mascot comedic-relief characters on the moon doing cute poses and being silly in the middle of an apocalypse.

[Cleretic]

My reading of Azem is that they were playing an open world game that isn't actually very engaging or interesting by the way the game developers actually intended the thing be played, but is extremely fun to break if you're smarter than the developers were.

Basically, they were playing Oblivion, including the part where they blew off the main quest. But unlike Oblivion, the apocalypse didn't wait for them.