Erenville's Journey

[Seraphor]

This is my biggest fear. I don't want another split expansion. Stormblood was weird in that regard, and I get why they had to do that for Endwalker (climax and all). I'd prefer each get their time in the spotlight, Ilsabard/Western Othard for one expansion and then Meracydia for another.

I could imagine we'll be seeing Hellsguard stuff in a relic story or even a criterion dungeon, they could probably fit a lot of lore about one of their cultures into one of them.

I don't think we're ever going to get another expansion focused on a single territory like Heavensward. The world has expanded too much to really give a single location that much attention. Besides, Heavensward wasn't truely focused, all zones were contiguous but they were distinctly different locations. You could lump in Western Coerthas and maybe Sea of Clouds in with Ishgard, but Dravania was a distinctly separate territory outside of Coerthas.

After Shadowbringers essentially recreated Eorzea on a different scale, giving each of the Mor Dhona/La Noscea/Thanalan/Black Shroud/Coerthas facsimiles a single zone each, I think that format is here to stay. Thavnair got itself a single zone, Sharlayan got a single zone, Garlemald (which should be as big as all of Eorzea at least!) got a single zone.

To get six new zones out of the next expansion, we'll probably need to visit at least three new 'territories' plus bonus and endgame zones. And EW made it up with two zones in space so probably four territories.
I can see exceptions in the New World and Meracydia though, which could potentially house two/three zones each.

Personally I'm thinking (maybe a little bit of hoping) that we'll round out Islabard in the next expansion. Expand that Islabard category in the teleport menu a bit. Throwing in Corvos, the Blindfrost, The Knowing Sea, maybe a Nagxia/Dalmasca zone, and something else currently obscured by clouds. You could easily make up five zones plus the secret sixth among that.

[MikkoAkure]

I don't think we're ever going to get another expansion focused on a single territory like Heavensward. The world has expanded too much to really give a single location that much attention. Besides, Heavensward wasn't truly focused, all zones were contiguous but they were distinctly different locations. You could lump in Western Coerthas and maybe Sea of Clouds in with Ishgard, but Dravania was a distinctly separate territory outside of Coerthas.

For me at least, it's less about "single territory", and more that I want an expansion where all the zones are actually right next to each other and tell a single story together.

In Stormblood, the overall story suffered from having to slam the brakes to go to the opposite side of the world for a very weak reason. The far east zones feel like they had much more going on in them and more time spent in them so sprinting the army to the doors of Ala Mhigo felt rushed in comparison.

ShB was fine and I liked how it worked with the zones actually connected to each other through a hub zone in the middle and spokes on the sides. Each of them had their own looks that couldn't be mixed up with each other but all told the story together. EW went back to what I and seemingly others didn't like about SB. The zones are all spread out from each other and you can't walk between them naturally.

I don't want an expansion where we split it up in completely separate geographical locations just to fulfill a checklist of places we haven't been yet. Meracydia has absolutely nothing to do with anywhere else in the entire world except for Dravania, which has already been done. It makes no sense to me to have it tacked on to another region. Personally I think it would be boring anyway since we're told it's a barely inhabited wasteland that has no interaction at all with the outside world. Just because it's there and exists doesn't mean we have to go there.

They could obviously make it more interesting than what we're told and give us a reason to go there, but I'm personally bored to death of arid/desert zones and I feel like they wrote themselves into a corner by making it a blasted hellscape. Number one reason I don't want to go to Meracydia though is that I never want to see an Allagan device ever again and I want a story that doesn't have Ascian/Allagan/Garlean baggage and can be it's own thing.

Treasures of Aht Urghan was my favorite overall FFXI expansion and it had barely anything to do with the original story, no Zilart or Kuluu in sight, and completely new game modes like Besieged and hunting the Astral Candescence if you lost. Similarly, it came out after the climax of multiple expansions worth of story that built off the vanilla game's story and felt like a vacation from everything else and I think that's what we need right now.


On the topic of the thread, I wonder if there's anything we can glean from this:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_02