What's Next? Story/Level/Class?

[Anonymoose]

If Shiva turns out to look more or less like she did in FFVII, I will volunteer to be Tempered.

If you haven't been watching the Dev Blog like a hawk since it first went online, and all the shame on your house if that's the case (): Shiva in FFXIV. The colors you see there are not the colors of her render. Those screens are an in-progress ZBrush project marked with contrasting colors for clearer definition and prevention of the eye strain that comes with looking at a colorless gray slab for weeks to months on end. Color Concept Art Here

...and why do the Beast Tribe primals look more "human-oid" by far, than they in any way resemble the physical forms of their summoning tribes?

Unknown! It could be that they have a singular creator who modeled them how they pleased. It could be that their visual appearance is based on the belief of their summoners somehow. Who knows! I imagine it's linked to why the Egi doesn't look like the primal. Garuda-Egi looks far more like the Empress of Birds than the Lady of the Vortex. All my theories on the matter are speculative, and if you hang around here long enough you'll learn that while I hit a few nails on the head on occasion, my theories have a tendency to make a lot of sense and then get proven completely wrong more often than partially right, lol.

[Catapult]

This was a few days after launch, so Mor Dhona's Gigas tribe (higher than the giants and the hecatons) had just been introduced; they weren't familiar, but they'd been seen.

Well found. I was hitting dead ends. Of course, we might still need to be prepared for a situation of mistaken context.

[Skyhound]

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I never understood why everyone is so salty about the attack on the Waking Sands. The Scions are basically glorified bookworms trying to play soldier, so everyone gets all in a tizzy when they see the reality of war. That is not murdering in cold blood, that is fighting a war. When Seal Team 6 raided Osama Bin Ladin's compound, did they leave anyone alive? No, they shot first and asked questions later. That's how infiltration works, especially with such unknown factors like the Echo at play.

Also as for Project Meteor, Nael Van Darnus was the only one who knew about it's full effects. In 1.0, he silenced a Garlean soldier for eavesdropping on a conversation between Nael and Gaius where Nael revealed the true purpose of Meteor. Gaius disagreed with Nael's plan and did not participate; he instead chose to help the Adventurer to stop Nael's plan because he felt it was going too far.

Nael Van Darnus was infamous even in Garlemald, so I really hope most of the other Legates are more like Gaius. I feel like it was a really poor choice by the writers to kill Gaius the way they did. Assuming he is dead, that is. If Gaius were still alive and I could join the XIVth Legion, I would have done it in an instant. Now I can only hope there's another suitable Legatus and Legion for me to join. D:

Why exactly is everyone obsessed with taking back Ala Mhigo? They were not much different than the Garleans when they attempted to conquer Eorzea back in the Autumn War. Even now, the Ala Mhigans are acting rather brash for being the villains not too long ago. I'm not surprised that they ended up in a slum and not even the Gridanians wanted to help them.

[Enkidoh]

-Pro-Empire stuff-

"Just another fool desperate for Gaius's affection."

I'm sorry but no matter how you try and rationalize the Empire and their actions, like it or not, the Empire of Garlemald is evil, period. SE have made that quite clear constantly. They're nothing but a petty nation of magic-poor technocrats with an inferiority complex a mile wide.

Their rhetoric might make them seem misunderstood, but their rampant imperialism only confirms that they are definitely keeping to the well established 'Evil Empire' trope. Everything that's wrong in Eorzea at the moment has been a direct result of Imperial meddling - which started with the invasion of Ala Mhigo.

All the Eorzeans want is to be left in peace and administer their affairs in their own way. It was the Empire who fired the first shot. The Empire who invaded Ala Mhigo (and there's even a suggestion they were the ones secretly pulling the strings of 'the King of Ruin' as well), the Empire who invaded Mor Dhona that led to the disaster that was the Battle of Silvertear Skies (and the end result of the massive aetheric disruption that reduced Mor Dhona to an aether soaked wasteland, and freed the Primals from their seal within the lake), the Empire that initiated Project Meteor (yes, van Darnus did kind of go off the rails at the end, but the whole Meteor project was initiated with the Emperor's blessing), which resulted in the Calamity, it was the Empire who siezed land following the Battle of Carteneau and built strongholds. It was the Empire who enslaved the people of Ala Mhigo to recover Ultima Weapon. All the disasters and destruction caused to Eorzea over the past twenty years has been directly caused by the Empire, pure and simple.

Also, apart from Ala Mhigo, none of the city states craved areas outside their own boundaries (that's why they're citystates after all, they're nations that are literally just cities with the lands outside their walls mostly neutral territory - Limsa Lominsa is a thalassocracy (a nation of the sea). Ul'dah is a sultanate effectively under the thumb of a corporate oligarchy. Gridania is effectively a magocracy (nation of magicians). Ishgard is a strict theocracy. Sharlayan is (or was) a nation of scholars and academics. Only Ala Mhigo had a history of belligerence, probably owing to their devotion to Rhalgr the Destroyer and their strong military (which would explain the disastrous Autumn War), as well as Garlemald's invasion - they were the closest of the Eorzean citystates to Garlean territory, they had the strongest army, and were the most 'technologically advanced' (although the exact nature of that is unknown). Little wonder Gaius wanted to use it as his foot-in-the-door into Eorzea.

Either way, the people of Ala Mhigo were stated as continuing to suffer under the Empire's heel - 1.0 it was mentioned repeatedly the atrocities that the Garleans were committing against the residents (although the accuracy of that was hard to clarify, given the Empire had sealed off the city from the rest of Eorzea by a huge wall), Garlean soldiers were shown brainwashing Ala Mhigan children into zealously hating the Primals and the beastmen (ironically in a way akin to Primal tempering), and then, in ARR there's Glaumunt in Revenant's Toll during the lead up to the infiltration of Castrum Centri, who tells his sad story of just how 'noble' the Garleans are, how after the fall of Ala Mhigo he and his family were imprisoned in a gulag-style labour camp and how Garlean troops were sexually abusing his mother and sister - which drove them to suicide.

And you say this is 'just war'?

As my Path Companion in 1.0 summed it up: "when was the last time the Garleans ever did anything good for Eorzea?"