This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[xbahax92]

The last map is killing my endurance. Really, I've tried so hard to not skip dialogue, take my time and enjoy the ride. I dont even hate Wuk Lamat. But the pacing of the quests and the urgency of the situation clash at each other, that I can only facepalm at SE. It takes days to finish the first half of the game, then you get into the interesting part just to be the errand boy/girl once again. I'm seriously struggling to finish the story and it's really sad. SE please for gods sake, stop stretching your MSQ so much. Less can be more, too.

[Ramiee]

Well after fully beating it. I feel like it's Stormblood 2.0

Not bad persay but incredibly unfocused and really a bit of a mess. What we have feels like 2 separate ideas for an expansion that gets fused together. Things feel like filler at the start due to the lack of direction, Wuk Lamat feels like a weaker version of ARR-HW Alphinaud and Erenville/Krile don't get nearly enough time to shine despite their direct connection to the second half of the story.

It does seriously feel like the whole Doma emancipation and Gyr Abana emancipation deal again where these two stories could really be their own expansions but got fused together really awkwardly. Having 3 villains is also not really a great idea either. My main issue really is how sidelined Krile and Erenville are, seriously Erenville should of been the healer in duty support it really feels awkward that he isn't present in dungeons or trial especially when they relate so heavily to him. Kriles entire storyline is so rushed and it's pretty sad because if you've been following her story in the side content of the last few expansions you know how much it means to her

For the positives I have to say I do really like the zones and their short storylines, though some were better than others obviously. I'm honestly incredibly impressed with the dungeons all of them felt incredibly significant to the story, none of them felt filler. While the second half did retread some grounds from Shadowbringers later half especially the final zone the ideas it explored were interesting, but of course rushed and unfocused.

Yeah honestly its quite sad I felt like we missed out on two really good expansion storylines that got fused together. Reminds me of Garlemald in Endwalker something that really should be an expansions worth of story that is only a smaller chunk to another one.

[Rhysati]

Uh ... I don't think any of that come remotely close to the status of the WoL ... merely "speak" to kings and queens? Have you seen how the Eorzia Alliance table are set up? On one side it's the head of states, on the other side are the Scions. We're not merely speaking to them, we're literally considered their equal when it comes to the matter of states, and they regularly "defer" to us. Since its formation at the end of HW, there were never an important decision made without our input. Migarsorm wasn't just any dragon, he's the progenitor of all dragon of this star, and he's our ride.

While interaction with higher being is a rare privilege for mortal in WoW, for the most part the heroes is still a few level below in the pecking order. The WoL on the other hand stand pretty much on equal ground.

You are literally called "Azeroth's Champion". You are given the most sacred legendary weapons in the history of the world. Those Kings and Queens you speak to? They aren't having you over for a spot of tea. You're there to discuss political options and what you think should be done. You help overthrow a dictator of the Horde. You deal with genocides. You traverse the Maw to save the entire bloody existance of everything in Heaven/hell. You literally get to join a faction in the heavens. Heck, if you are a warrior you hang out with their version of Odin and can travel and fly down to land in other locations in the world.

You aren't the literally chosen one, but you're damned near close to it since literally everything that happens in the world is a direct result of your actions.

[Ramiee]

You are literally called "Azeroth's Champion". You are given the most sacred legendary weapons in the history of the world. Those Kings and Queens you speak to? They aren't having you over for a spot of tea. You're there to discuss political options and what you think should be done. You help overthrow a dictator of the Horde. You deal with genocides. You traverse the Maw to save the entire bloody existance of everything in Heaven/hell. You literally get to join a faction in the heavens. Heck, if you are a warrior you hang out with their version of Odin and can travel and fly down to land in other locations in the world.

You aren't the literally chosen one, but you're damned near close to it since literally everything that happens in the world is a direct result of your actions.

Well I think it seems like you're less important than the WoL because you are often acknowledged as a number of many. It's why in raids and boss fights you're often referred in pural. You are the chosen one champion of azeroth but you are one of many chosen ones it's mostly in story quests where you are individually close to WoL status.
If the other WoL were acknowledged in the world as being exceptionally on the level of us then I think it would feel more like wow.

[missybee]

I had to pop in to also express my disappointment. To preface this, these opinions are coming from someone who has had an all but unshakeable love for the game since ARR. Been playing since 1.0's beta, and even though I left that early, ARR onward has captivated me, with Shadowbringers being my favorite narrative in any medium (vidya, TV, books, or otherwise).

The long and short of it is that both the writing and pacing of Dawntrail are not good, and in some places are actually really bad.

And here's the thing - I actually enjoyed Wuk Lamat and the gang's quest for the Infinity Starbursts. I am not going to say that it was absolutely captivating, but I enjoyed learning about the different cultures of this new area, and it just felt cozy and nice. I appreciated that we were working hard to defeat racism and promote acceptance.

Basically the SECOND Mamook wraps up, however, I can't help but feel that narrative just takes an absolute tumble. The player has been teased about the Golden City for over a year now, annnnnnd we're just going to turn away and leave. Obviously I understand now that there are narrative contrivances for why we couldn't cross through the gate, but for us to instead have to pick up poop and have the remaining Scions shoehorned back into the story...it just feels so bad?

In the interest of being fully transparent, I am still progressing through Alexandria, but even this is boring me to tears. Certainly each of the game's previous expansions have had ups and downs, and lulls in their narratives, but I have NEVER felt this way about the story in XIV - raid storylines and post EW included.

I don't really know how coherent this rambling is, but I guess I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels so disappointed. I keep thinking of the "look how they massacred my boy" gif from The Godfather....

Edit: Music still absolutely slaps though

[Rakimou]

I think DT's MSQ is okay at best. I'd say it's better than Stormblood and ARR, but worse than HW and EW and obivously much worse than ShB.
Below is a collection of my thoughts I wrote down while playing the MSQ.

1. Wuk Lamat is terrible. After listening to her english VA for an hour, I had to switch to the japanese VA, which is very sad, because I actually prefer the english VA for everyone else. Even if we ignore the terrible voice acting, she's just so one dimensional throughout the whole story. And extremely annoying. Personally I survived the story by quickly reading and skipping all of her lines, but it was a struggle.

2. The overall pacing is terrible. I thought EW started slow, but DT takes it to a whole another level. Both starting zones are mind numbingly boring. Even when it eventually gets to some interesting plot points, it's bogged down by busywork and pointless dialog.

3. The MSQ quests have to improve. If we have to sit through hours of mediocre cuscenes, at least the gameplay between them needs to be engaging. Right now it's same old go to this location, click a thing and occasionally kill a mob.

4. Speaking of cutscenes, in my opinion, DT's quality of non voiced cutscenes has gone down. 10 seconds of zooming in on a character closing their eyes gets boring really fast. The cutscenes feel abnormally slow, and often chatacters take ages to get to a point.

5. In FFXIV the action has always been interspersed by quieter moments. In DT, I felt like the quieter moments were very formulaic. You get to a new zone, you're introduced to some problem, you have to talk to random NPC to "gather information" or to "get to know them" then you move on to fight the big bad.

6. The story and pretty much all characters lack any kind of subtlety or depth. "Hey, we can do anything with the power of friendship! For peace!" Don't quote me on this, but I feel like most of XIV's players are adults, who can handle slightly more involved themes.

7. Most of the plot twists are very obvious and can be seen from a mile. Again, this has to do with very simplistic writing.

8. None of the characters are interesting, they have no bite or grit. I had high hopes for Erenville, only for him to act like an emo kid most of the time.

9. The main antagonists are anime tier, in terms of presentation and their motivation. In a bad way.

The fights and the music are very cool though. And obviously the game looks pretty.
Overall I'd say I enjoyed my time, especially once I started skipping filler bullshit. But it felt like a major downgrade after EW.

[fioravictorine]

Well I wanted a chill expansion where we get to do fun things with the Scions, adventuring etc not Wuk Lamat this, Wuk Lamat that

We are just a babysitter and mostly a standing observer to this new character introduced out of nowhere (in 0.05 of a patch no less lol). The writers automatically assumed everyone will LOVE this annoying bish and forcefully put her in everything

[Pyro2hell3]

I mean the story of dt is pretty much about how monarchy is terrible from of government this will all probbaly happen again in few decades

also we left Wuk Lamat alone for like 15 minutes and they got attacked by goddamn space ships
so I'm not even sure the place will last that long

[CosmoBabylonia]

I had to pop in to also express my disappointment. To preface this, these opinions are coming from someone who has had an all but unshakeable love for the game since ARR. Been playing since 1.0's beta, and even though I left that early, ARR onward has captivated me, with Shadowbringers being my favorite narrative in any medium (vidya, TV, books, or otherwise).

The long and short of it is that both the writing and pacing of Dawntrail are not good, and in some places are actually really bad.

And here's the thing - I actually enjoyed Wuk Lamat and the gang's quest for the Infinity Starbursts. I am not going to say that it was absolutely captivating, but I enjoyed learning about the different cultures of this new area, and it just felt cozy and nice. I appreciated that we were working hard to defeat racism and promote acceptance.

Basically the SECOND Mamook wraps up, however, I can't help but feel that narrative just takes an absolute tumble. The player has been teased about the Golden City for over a year now, annnnnnd we're just going to turn away and leave. Obviously I understand now that there are narrative contrivances for why we couldn't cross through the gate, but for us to instead have to pick up poop and have the remaining Scions shoehorned back into the story...it just feels so bad?

In the interest of being fully transparent, I am still progressing through Alexandria, but even this is boring me to tears. Certainly each of the game's previous expansions have had ups and downs, and lulls in their narratives, but I have NEVER felt this way about the story in XIV - raid storylines and post EW included.

I don't really know how coherent this rambling is, but I guess I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels so disappointed. I keep thinking of the "look how they massacred my boy" gif from The Godfather....

Edit: Music still absolutely slaps though

I'm stealing Infinity Starbursts.

[Raven2014]

You are literally called "Azeroth's Champion". You are given the most sacred legendary weapons in the history of the world. Those Kings and Queens you speak to? They aren't having you over for a spot of tea. You're there to discuss political options and what you think should be done. You help overthrow a dictator of the Horde. You deal with genocides. You traverse the Maw to save the entire bloody existence of everything in Heaven/hell. You literally get to join a faction in the heavens. Heck, if you are a warrior you hang out with their version of Odin and can travel and fly down to land in other locations in the world.

You aren't the literally chosen one, but you're damned near close to it since literally everything that happens in the world is a direct result of your actions.

And? The WoL did all of that and a lot more. The whole reason the WoL is not given a "sacred legendary weapons" because such a thing doesn't exist in FF14, but it has show time and time again that the Scion can commandeer and request any resources they want no matter how rare or advanced. Spoiler for DT end game

At the end of DT we're basically entrusted with a world altering artifact that nobody know how it works except it's extremely powerful. We also asked a certain nation to jump in fire with us and they basically just asked "where".

Like, as a whole, the Scion is probably more influential than any single city state, and the WoL is probably regarded higher than any leader except for maybe their own respective citizen. It got to a point that the Scion had faked their disbandment so they don't end up influence other countries too much. And also try to avoid being seeing together too much because most people at this point gonna assume if all the Scion appear at one place than some really really bad thing gonna hit the fan. Also the Scion's influence wasn't just limited to combat achievement.

- They're master diplomats and had played kingmaker to a few countries.

- The manifesto and constitution of the largest Alliance is written by Alphinaud.

- Alise was behind the biggest medical break through in history (curing the tempered) that opened the door for total diplomacy and unification.

- The Archons is pretty much the top of their field in the world. (i.e even the Borza resistance had requested help from Thrance for his expertise).

- The Scion wasn't just helped as savior who just solve the crisis. They have also been deeply involved with rebuilding the nations they help to come back from ruin.





And on a personal level, the WoL's relationship with the top leaders are not only professional, but also intimated.

- We're literally friends with ALL the head of states.

- We're friend with the CEO of the most technological advance company in the world (Cid), and literally can ask him to do anything for us even if it meant bankrupting his company.

- We're friend with the most power family - the dragon ... all of them. We probably can call in 2-3 different dragonflies for assistant at this point.

- We have a working relationship with the biggest trade network (the syndicate and lolorito)

- We had walked among Gods, both good and bad, befriend some of them while killing some others.

- The WoL is basically one of the demi gods reincarnated (Azem) that can use multi-dimesional summoning at will.



Like ... due to the style, I can understand the WoL is not presented as cool and macho as the Champion of Azeroth. But their influence is so much bigger it doesn't even make sense to compare.