8.0 speculation

[Pimsan20]

Yeah it’s the senate building. The one building that’s unblemished by the war in the part of the Garlemald map we have access to. In the sidequest, a guard charged with protected the royal family said they escaped to there but were all killed and only he and a maid escaped.

Must have missed or forgot about that one.

[Cilia]

Must have missed or forgot about that one.

Sidequest chain "Stranded at the Station" --> "Mum is the Word."

While there is no hard confirmation, you find a royal guard and chambermaid who fled with the royal family (including Nerva and, presumably, Titus) when they came under attack by Anima's thralls and rogue warmachina; they fled from Senaculum Imperialis to Palatium Novum, but you find no other survivors beyond the royal guard and chambermaid in question. The implication is that they were the only survivors.

[Pimsan20]

Sidequest chain "Stranded at the Station" --> "Mum is the Word."

While there is no hard confirmation, you find a royal guard and chambermaid who fled with the royal family (including Nerva and, presumably, Titus) when they came under attack by Anima's thralls and rogue warmachina; they fled from Senaculum Imperialis to Palatium Novum, but you find no other survivors beyond the royal guard and chambermaid in question. The implication is that they were the only survivors.

Then the chance of Titus being alive is very low then.

[Cilia]

Which leaves the question of "Why go back to Garlemald?" (other than, heavens forfend, being without the company of Alphinaud and Alisae for more than a patch).

... my guess is that, knowing the dimensional barrier in areas of Garlemald is already weak, we're going to cross over into the "ice" reflection for some reason, and the architecture of wherever it is we first find coincidentally bears similarities to Garlemald's concrete brutalism.

How that factors into the greater picture of 8.0 I still don't know yet other than introducing further dimensional crossings.

[Zero-ELEC]

... my guess is that, knowing the dimensional barrier in areas of Garlemald is already weak, we're going to cross over into the "ice" reflection for some reason, and the architecture of wherever it is we first find coincidentally bears similarities to Garlemald's concrete brutalism.

Oh speaking of an "ice reflection", I know that there was speculation about the digital "worlds beyond" that were shown by Queen Eternal being actual reflections that were suffering their own pseudo-Calamities, ones of earth, wind, and ice. I wonder if that will play in any way.

[Cleretic]

Which leaves the question of "Why go back to Garlemald?" (other than, heavens forfend, being without the company of Alphinaud and Alisae for more than a patch).

This is a much better question to ask, and my reflexive answer--and keeping aware that my usual reflexive answers trend towards the simplest ones--is just that Alphinaud and Alisaie, being that they went back a patch ago, have just been back long enough to see an issue and call us for help. There's also a chance it could even be Thancred and/or Urianger, who left Tural even earlier and we've got no idea where they went.

I think the twins are the stronger answer, especially because they specifically went to Tural to go learn things to then apply to Garlemald; perhaps there's something going on with some echoes to what happened earlier in Dawntrail, so they call us to go 'hey we've got a mid-grade Zoraal Ja situation going on here, might need some help getting on top of this'. Which leads to the notion of an expansion that's largely focused around helping and securing a post-occupation Ilsabard, which is the 8.0 that I think seems the most likely and could be quite interesting, albeit not the one I want (mostly because it's not Meracydia).

[Zero-ELEC]

Ah, there we go, the Letter from the Producer LIVE official English translation recap thingy came out and confirms that the Clyteum is Garlean, which I feel was only in doubt due to the uncertainty of the translation of what Yoshida said.

[Pimsan20]

Going to change the subject away from garlemald. I’m really curious on what the next alliance raid will be in 8.0. There is a lot we can go through. But personally I think a dragon quest alliance raid based of the first trilogy would be a good pick for it.

[Voidmage]

Going to change the subject away from garlemald. I’m really curious on what the next alliance raid will be in 8.0. There is a lot we can go through. But personally I think a dragon quest alliance raid based of the first trilogy would be a good pick for it.

I could really do without another Raid story that you need to have played the origin games to understand the story. FFXI raid is fun but the story is only references right now with an Explanation NPC for those who haven't played it only...


@Topic
Right now I neither think it has something to do with Garlemald (Dungeon is probably more a one time thing with a self contained problem, especially because YoshiP said we would go quickly through the places this patch) nor with the Source much.
The digest of the Live letter mentioned that in contrast to DT the scenario of 7.5 will be "deeply related to the WoL's personal fate" so I think it might either be something with Azem / the key going forward (more a legacy than the real thing) and Shards or something completely left field but way more personal to the player character than DT was.
Maybe we really do get something like an ARR in the way of the story in that we start anew in some way or form, even if somewhere else or there is something that forces us into a "new role".

What we know is that the Winterers or at least Calyx and one Ascian were working on "saving" people from the ninth.
If I had a choice I would actually like our WoL to kinda become a "Pseudo Winterer / Ascian" for that. Not in a "ends justify the means" way like the former but in a "well, can't choose allies for this one".

No matter what though, I think 8.0 will be a pretty big thing for the world and the WoL this time around.

[mallleable]

Going to change the subject away from garlemald. I’m really curious on what the next alliance raid will be in 8.0. There is a lot we can go through. But personally I think a dragon quest alliance raid based of the first trilogy would be a good pick for it.

Unironically, I want a World of Warcraft collab for the 8.0 alliance raid. They experimented with that painterly look in Merchant's Tale, so I think it's only a matter of time. It could be someone's dreams of Azeroth recorded in a magical dream journal.