What was your favourite expansion stories, ranked in order?

[Theox]

1. Shadowbringers. Beautiful, compelling story with interesting characters which makes you think about the nature of good and evil and how you engage with such topics as a human being.

2. Heavensward. Sentimental, grandeur, pretentious (in a good way), full of hope and determination for the future.

3. Stormblood. What was the plot again? It's fine... I guess.

4. A Realm Reborn. Kind of silly and overall not taking itself seriously but it can still pass.

5. Endwalker. Mediocre, dull and outright stupid. Pure garbage just in any way possible.

[YukikoKurosawa]

On the subject of Endwalker, I think the problem is they built up whatever caused the Final Days that threatened the Ancients far too much. Then THAT scene happens with Meteion getting the response from her sisters from space and you think "OMG there's this horrific thing out there that's scared the shit out of Meteion it must be what caused the Final Days!", then when she finally reveals her report and lists off numerous worlds wiped out this only further cements this theory......

Only for you to get your answer at the end of the ensuing dungeon, and you learn that it was just "everyone in the universe despaired to death" and that Meteion herself is the cause of the Final Days because she learns of aliens despairing which makes her despair and she decides to despair the world to death. And while yes I understand there's more to it than that, but when you build up something heavily, only to reveal it's just one of the Ancient's creations who's depressed (to put it one way), I can't pretend I wasn't severely dissapointed.

Also the twist of what the Sharlayan forum was hiding just being "we were building a spaceship to flee to final days" which by the time of the reveal you've already figured that out, it's like......That's it? There are SO many more interesting things they could've done. I can appreciate they decided to try something different and subvert expectations, but you have to still MEET those expectations in some way. In both cases, they built something up way too high only to undeliver heavily. And what frustrates me more is that they obviously KNEW this wasn't going to hold the level of impact that they were building up to. There is no way the writers thought this reveal was gonna blow players away who probably thought of some eldrich horror being behind everything. It's the exact opposite of that.

On that note, I'm sorta glad they're avoiding such large-scale plotlines now, if only because they clearly do not have the will or capacity to deliver such high expectations in these kinds of stories. I would seriously hate for them to build up some scary new threat only to pull another Meteion again.

[Lieri]

EW would have been much cooler if the true endboss is the almost perfect or perfect Zodiark merged with Zenos.

[kyzy]

1. Shadowbringers, its music and thematics and story stands alone in its greatness. You care for the first as much as the source in a single story, you feel the peoples suffering, you hate who they hate, you want to save this world.
2. Heavensward, tragic love story, epic fights, the only expac that made me cry at the end. The isolation of Ishgard, the politics and the twists... (chefs kiss)
3. Stormblood, a war story where I actually felt the weight of war. Music is brilliant, far eastern themes are beautiful and unique/interesting.
4. Endwalker is only here because nothing can be as bad as ARR. Jumbled story coupled with... some good npc insight I guess?
5. A realm reborn, I actually hate this expac and never want to play it again LOL. It's boring, convoluted, flavorless.

[Cleretic]

EW would have been much cooler if the true endboss is the almost perfect or perfect Zodiark merged with Zenos.

I disagree, to me that sounds like the lamest way to end the expansion, Zodiark, and Zenos. Zodiark being the first trial was one of the smartest parts of Endwalker to me, because it blew out expectations both in and out of the game. 'You have no idea what's coming' became both a danger to the characters and a portent to the players, because nobody on either side of the fourth wall was really thinking too hard about what happens after Zodiark dies.

[Denishia]

I've had a hard time trying to think of my list, because it's hard for me to decouple my excitement and sense of wonder and learning and the knowledge of how foundational everything is in ARR so the contrarian in me wants to rank it first just to spite everyone else, how much I loved the dungeon designs of SB and how much I enjoyed the deep dive into what a generation raised under fascist imperial occupiers would do to impact people in a variety of ways and how wonderful Fordola and a lesser extent Yotsuyu were balanced against the absolute disappointment of Zenos and his laundry list of tropes I disdain, that I adored Ardbert and his VA and I was so glad to have in Emet a villain that I loathed with every second of my being and by that final trial I needed to kill him (ShB misfired in trying to make me feel earnestly sympathetic to the Ascian cause, especially when my first and only reaction to Amaurot was to be unimpressed and unsettled) - but however much I loved Norvrandt the story itself had pacing issues. As did HW which has the NPCs I adore and the worldbuilding nostalgia of ARR, but doesn't have the sophistication of later expacs. EW never hit the pacing issues in the MSQ itself except for one single quest that all the other expacs and ARR did - but I hated the first half of Elpis and choice of narrator and the final scene with Emet was as excruciating to sit through as any pre-EW scene with Zenos. LOVED that Zodiark was killed early. EW did finally somewhat redeem Zenos's inclusion as a character as a glorified Team Rocket who ties into the question of nihilism, hedonism, and absurdism, and I do adore that they took the IX homages started in ShB to make an updated and better-integrated Necron. I think if pressed, HW-EW-ShB has a three-way tie for first and ARR and SB second, only because ARR's charming but dated basic story lowers it and SB introduced the most characters into the MSQ that I dislike. Adding in the raid-related storylines would further muddle things.

[Ydalia]

1. Shadowbringers
2. Heavensward
3. Endwalker
4. Stormblood
5. ARR