The expansion on the horizon

[ElysiumDragon]

Definitely South Sea Isles and Meracydia, maybe Corvos as well. South Sea Isles because they're on the way to Meracydia anyway, so might as well stop off there for supplies and some exploring, Meracydia is all but guaranteed because it's been heavily hinted at more than enough times.

Oh, and the South Sea Isles were in Emet's list of 'locations we haven't been yet'.

[SaitoHikari]

I'm not entirely convinced we're going to Meracydia immediately. The central part of the Three Great Continents is still shrouded in clouds as far as our world map goes, there's a few remaining loose ends and locales there that we haven't been to yet, and... It's worth noting we still can't travel on foot from Eorzea all the way to Doma, for one.

I can see us going to level 100 while remaining on the Continents or traveling to the South Sea Isles, and whatever alternate leveling system they might come up with would come into effect when we actually do cross all the way to Meracydia in the next expansion after.

[george357]

we will get their when we get their its just a matter of time.

[MikkoAkure]

Definitely South Sea Isles and Meracydia, maybe Corvos as well. South Sea Isles because they're on the way to Meracydia anyway, so might as well stop off there for supplies and some exploring, Meracydia is all but guaranteed because it's been heavily hinted at more than enough times.

Oh, and the South Sea Isles were in Emet's list of 'locations we haven't been yet'.

In one interview, Ishikawa said that Emet's line at the end of EW was something she wanted to put in since the planning phase of 6.0 while in another interview Yoshi-P said 7.0 wasn't planned out until the middle of last year. The part with the "ruins beneath the waters" was probably tacked onto the script before 6.0 release but after they had decided on story beats for 6.1 so that there would be some modicum of continuity into the post-EW patches.

For those reasons, I wouldn't take Emet's speech as a prophecy of 7.0 and he mentioned other places besides Meracydia. So far all we know about it is that it's a barely habitable wasteland, and while they can retcon things to make it more interesting to go there, it doesn't really feel worthy of a whole expansion unless you want to mark it off on your checklist as "been there, done that". The whole point of his speech according to Yoshi-P and Oda is that "the adventure continues" and despite the end of the main original story, there's still things to do and places to explore and we can be adventurers again, not necessarily that those are the places we're going to.

One of the reasons I liked Shadowbringers was because everything was in one tight region and we didn't have zones on opposite ends of the world map that didn't connect with each other. I don't want 7.0 to be a repeat of EW and SB having to collect all the zones that were mentioned but we didn't get to visit yet. Wherever we go, I hope it's just one central place with 5 normal, connected zones and the 1 wacky secret one at the end.

We're not going to have any hints until 6.5 so while it could be Meracydia, it could very well be anywhere else too and there are no hints at all in the game as of this post to tell us.

[Cleretic]

For those reasons, I wouldn't take Emet's speech as a prophecy of 7.0 and he mentioned other places besides Meracydia. So far all we know about it is that it's a barely habitable wasteland, and while they can retcon things to make it more interesting to go there, it doesn't really feel worthy of a whole expansion unless you want to mark it off on your checklist as "been there, done that". The whole point of his speech according to Yoshi-P and Oda is that "the adventure continues" and despite the end of the main original story, there's still things to do and places to explore and we can be adventurers again, not necessarily that those are the places we're going to.

For clarification on the main place I want to go to: It's definitely confirmably habitable, because the Encyclopeda Eorzea section on it mentions that the main reason it's a near-total unknown is that the natives are actively hostile to visitors. That also combines with the clear Australian influences in its other descriptions probably give us a more accurate idea of what kind of 'wasteland' it is: Some very plausibly habitable pockets (mostly around water sources), and a whole lot of land that just doesn't have the access to natural resources to sustain a sizeable human population. ...and possibly also a LOT of very dangerous wildlife.

Which honestly, sounds like a perfect environment for setting an expansion. Only a couple cities and major settlements, and then an entire continent full of improbably murderous plants, insects and animals? I mean that's basically just describing Norvrandt without the Sin Eaters.

[Iscah]

The only way I could see them phasing the Victory out and doing a Timat type thing is is we had to use it as the way to get to the New World.

There's very little reason for us to need a specific, currently incomplete ship when there are others available, some of them already shown to be capable of cross-continent travel. Plus the BLU storyline characters must have a way of getting there and back.

[SannaR]

There's very little reason for us to need a specific, currently incomplete ship when there are others available, some of them already shown to be capable of cross-continent travel. Plus the BLU storyline characters must have a way of getting there and back.

I know there's very little reason to use it vs any other ship if we were going to the New World. It just would be an option.

[SannaR]

Meracydia also according to other minions is where some of the Hippos originally came from. Which has made some feel that it will be a mix of Fantasy Egypt and Australia.

[MikkoAkure]

For clarification on the main place I want to go to: It's definitely confirmably habitable, because the Encyclopeda Eorzea section on it mentions that the main reason it's a near-total unknown is that the natives are actively hostile to visitors. That also combines with the clear Australian influences in its other descriptions probably give us a more accurate idea of what kind of 'wasteland' it is: Some very plausibly habitable pockets (mostly around water sources), and a whole lot of land that just doesn't have the access to natural resources to sustain a sizeable human population. ...and possibly also a LOT of very dangerous wildlife.

Which honestly, sounds like a perfect environment for setting an expansion. Only a couple cities and major settlements, and then an entire continent full of improbably murderous plants, insects and animals? I mean that's basically just describing Norvrandt without the Sin Eaters.

The main problem I have with it though is that we're already told in that same passage off the Encyclopedia Eorzea that you're looking at that nearly the entire continent was rendered a wasteland by war with areas rendered uninhabitable and the remaining reclusive population is openly hostile. We can see Meracydia from the moon and the entire continent is desert unless there's jungle hiding behind the clouds in the corner. I personally don't find getting multiple variations of desert zones as being interesting, and we already have all of Thanalan, Ahm Araeng, and the 3 Ala Mhigan zones. We also had variations on a jungle zone in each of the past 2 expansions.

The past 2 expansions have given us a variety of different environments and I don't really see that happening with Meracydia. I don't personally know anyone who counts any of the existing desert zones as their favorites and at least on my server, Goblet is the least desirable housing zone. There's only so many ways you can make beige, arid zones visually appealing or at least interesting, and the other zones they're released with get more love anyway.

I would prefer an expansion that isn't necessarily chained by past story, where the writers can do something completely brand new in a region that has actual variety.

[RyuDragnier]

The main problem I have with it though is that we're already told in that same passage off the Encyclopedia Eorzea that you're looking at that nearly the entire continent was rendered a wasteland by war with areas rendered uninhabitable and the remaining reclusive population is openly hostile. We can see Meracydia from the moon and the entire continent is desert unless there's jungle hiding behind the clouds in the corner. I personally don't find getting multiple variations of desert zones as being interesting, and we already have all of Thanalan, Ahm Araeng, and the 3 Ala Mhigan zones. We also had variations on a jungle zone in each of the past 2 expansions.

The past 2 expansions have given us a variety of different environments and I don't really see that happening with Meracydia. I don't personally know anyone who counts any of the existing desert zones as their favorites and at least on my server, Goblet is the least desirable housing zone. There's only so many ways you can make beige, arid zones visually appealing or at least interesting, and the other zones they're released with get more love anyway.

I would prefer an expansion that isn't necessarily chained by past story, where the writers can do something completely brand new in a region that has actual variety.

You do know that if they use Australia as a visual aid for how the place would be, it would be pretty varied, right? It have basins (and perhaps a rainy city like Burmecia), coastal areas, a small island off the coast we start at (think Besaid/Kilika from FFX), mountain ranges (where Tiamat's brood could live), perhaps a giant underground area (think Underworld from FF4), and the big desert area could be the final location for the expansion, spiced up with Allagan ruins and horrors.