7.3 cliff hanger (spoilers, obviously)

[Raiya]

I am convinced, now more than ever, that 8.0 is 100% going to be Shadowbringers - the Sequel. We are going to use a key, hop to another shard, and SE can avoid building out the rest of the Eorzea map by having us in all new zones somewhere else.

Shadowcleaners: Tidying Up Emet's leftover mess because we made him retire early. XD

[Oizen]

Feels like they retreated to comfortable grounds after the dumpsterfire that was Wuk Wuk's Bizarre Adventure, kinda to be expected.

[WeebStarz]

The best example I can give for a long running franchise is star wars. No 10 year plus fan of star wars wants to wake up one day and hear, "No more jedi, no more sith, and no more light sabers" and im glad to see a ascian. Our character has basically powered creep to god slayer and world traveler even if sometimes required the help of others. So unless the devs were going to pull a new God tier organization out they were left with two options retcon or eorzean politics.
The true problem with story happened in Endwalker, its a great expansion story if this was going to be the end of the franchise, or a single player game were you next game is going to have a time skip hundreds of years in the future, but this is a mmo were people keep their character so those things cant happen. All Endwalker did was speed run the Garleans, and ascians out the game leaving no real bad guys or factions that we as players could believe based on the lore at the time.

Dawntrail could of been better if they focused on oblivion vs preservation early in the story to build preservation into organization or secret society that could be a rival faction for the later expansions, but i think thats happening now. Guess they are going to grab Elidbus out of the crystal tower after all

[Auro_Seldaris]

Well, ya'll have been violently hateful towards the new characters they introduced in Dawntrail, so of course they are just abandon the idea of introducing new characters for you to be violently hateful towards and go back to "it was Ascians All Along".

at least no more Woke Lolmat though amirite

First of all, most of the new characters suck. Simple as. The only one that didn't has been told to sit her jorts-wearing ass on the throne of Alexandria and keep her mouth shut until a role quest needs unvoiced dialogue from a city-state leader. Also... Bruv, the history lesson occurred during the 7.0 MSQ. They were already establishing the Ascian connection then. They would have had to see the future to do that during 7.0 "because we don't like the new characters".

[All_Nonsense]

Well, ya'll have been violently hateful towards the new characters they introduced in Dawntrail, so of course they are just abandon the idea of introducing new characters for you to be violently hateful towards and go back to "it was Ascians All Along".

at least no more Woke Lolmat though amirite

"The story is bad because of the players. Not the people who wrote it. Not the devs who made it. Not the thousands of hands it was touched by who never stopped to go 'wait, is what we're making ass?' None of that. It was the players - specifically the 10 people who post on the forums. It's their fault. I can't believe they destroyed the game. It's the players fault look at me Yoshi P I am a better fan than them look at me"

[Hallarem]

Loss for words at how bad their writing team has become. 7.0 was a mess to set this all up, so the patch content suffers as well trying to rush you into things and to care about people. Though 7.3 is probably one of the better patches storywise it still suffers from the bad seeds planted and the horrid plot.

"Wherever there are primals, ascians are never far" Like.. didn't you admittedly rush through Endwalker to "complete the arc"? Smashing Garlemald and everything else. And now you're backpedaling to Ascians? Please fire these writers already. Not looking forward to having Calyx as a villain, I really don't hate him, nor want to know more about him. Fear of death people vs Ascians being afraid of losing their paradise and being sad for the first time, its just a bunch of theme npc babies. Both were badly written and hardly believable functioning characters unless they were named npc's you hanged out with. Except Hermes, absolute waste of space sadboi with unclear instructions delivered to sadbird as well because "muh themes". Also meh, Sphene didn't become an adventurer

Animations are better though, blood here and there, our WoL actually doing stuff in cutscenes. And I did enjoy the puzzle quests, there is hope for quest diversity still. It just needs a good story to go along with it and good characters, these writers ain't it. "Several weeks later" oh my god, they actually PASSED time. How brave. Krile getting more screentime, always good. New music? Always good.


Also lol, they are mocking us by playing Smile again.
Winterer? So, someone who winters in a place, waiting for summer. Some organization waiting for their opportunity
Honestly, the Ascian thing might be a red herring. But knowing how predictable the writing is nowadays, I wouldn't put it past them to just BLAM ASCIANS AGAIN.
I guessed like 4-5 things that would happen in this patch before it even came out

[Renaclock]

They're not "Ascians" but another organization branched from it I assume.
Since there is no way ascians didn't know or never contacted with 9th shard its natural to be that way.
It would be worse if they were completely new threat coming out of nowhere.
"An organization started by reincarnated ascian overlord that went rogue for different purpose,methods" is my guess and it makes sense.
Nomatter what the next "big bad" is it will be unnatural for them to not have any connection with ascians.
"Key" being related to Azem might suggest that "Winterer" is related to her/him which is very interesting.

[Auro_Seldaris]

"The story is bad because of the players. Not the people who wrote it. Not the devs who made it. Not the thousands of hands it was touched by who never stopped to go 'wait, is what we're making ass?' None of that. It was the players - specifically the 10 people who post on the forums. It's their fault. I can't believe they destroyed the game. It's the players fault look at me Yoshi P I am a better fan than them look at me"

Exactly. The buck stops with Yoshida and the dev team, not me the player. I refer to one of the all-time great quotes on leadership.

"As captain... I am responsible for the conduct of the crew under my command" - Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

[Ajisaii]

Well, ya'll have been violently hateful towards the new characters they introduced in Dawntrail, so of course they are just abandon the idea of introducing new characters for you to be violently hateful towards and go back to "it was Ascians All Along".

at least no more Woke Lolmat though amirite

"The story sucking is actually YOUR fault"

[DiaDeem]

I don't mind that much, and I'm partly joking with the image, but yeah lol