The big spoiler in the Heavensward opening/trailer was a huge mistake. (spoilers obv)

[Waffilicious]

Just gonna leave this here and get back to eating my popcorn. For the record, Tiggy, let's be completely insane and disagree with the OP about his opinion.

loved that article i actually do that to get hooked in some stories but i don't do that in all.

It has no emotional weight or value to anyone who has not experienced the 2.0-2.55 storyline.

Guy with and axe in the snow? Who is pink midget?
Oh she died!?
Oh big guy lost his arm? Is he bad?
Midget smirking. Is he bad?
Guy with axe running away. Guy with axe getting shit burnt by dragons.
Oh spikey guy with lance.
Oh axe man goes and gets a lance. Oh hey airship.
Oh shit more dragons.

OOOH AXE MAN LOOKS COOL IN NEW GEAR AND WITH SPIKEY LANCE FRIENDS.

Hurrrr.

My point is it only spoils people that are well into the story but not finished - which is exactly why it comes with a spoiler warning. It's great action packed advertisement to someone with no knowledge of the game.

I think this would be the most common reaction for new people.

[Katzyn]

I don't understand why there wouldn't be spoilers in an opening movie sequence of a game expansion...I would think that if you're at the point of an opening sequence to a new storyline, you'd have finished the previous storyline...

When I first started this game...I didn't know what in the hell was going on in the opening sequence lol. There was fighting, and some old guy dying, and I had no idea what any of that was depicting until MUCH later...and that didn't bother me in the slightest. If I was new to the game NOW and saw the opening sequence for the expansion today, I'd probably think, "holy crap this game looks like it has an amazing story..."

That's just me, though.

[Jafnharr]

I think the spoiler tag in the CG is mainly for players who currently playing the game and yet to finish MSQ.
But since OP complains about how this would affect potential new players, then let me put this to you. For someone who's new to the universe and have no idea who any of the characters is, this can be viewed as something else than a spoiler. There are plenty of TV series and movies out there that give you an event that happened at the end of the season in the very 1st episode/few mins, then retrace the whole event throughout the season. And quite frankly, I am sure a lot of current players will tell you they see this coming for Nanamo a few patches ago, so spoiler or not, most ppl have already expected this (but still shocked after actually seeing the scene played out).
So as a new player, after seeing that trailer and starts playing 2.0, I would want to find out who kill her and keep me interested all along, especially during any U'dah questline. Or even, given how it is common in storytelling these days, she could have been alive but I was only shown she lying on the floor. So watching that CG could do a lot of things to attract new players. And if I have yet to play FFXIV and am interested in the game but don't want any spoiler, after seeing the spoiler warning, I'll probably stop and look around to see if there's any spoiler free trailer.

[LlenCoram]

I think we're done here. It has been a pleasant exercise in dismantling poorly construed arguments, but the same ones keep popping up and there's no point to repeating myself any further. Sorry for any loss of hair my discourse may have wrought, and good night.

*tips fedora*

[Tiggy]

Just gonna leave this here and get back to eating my popcorn. For the record, Tiggy, let's be completely insane and disagree with the OP about his opinion.

I like the cut of your jib. :P

[Alberel]

OP whilst I understand your premise your argument is found somewhat lacking when countless precedents already exist throughout the gaming industry for exactly what you are lamenting.

The Warlords of Draenor cinematic trailer shows Garrosh Hellscream rallying the Iron Horde to lead against Azeroth despite him being an ally until the end of the previous expansion story. This spoils the fact that he betrays the horde for any prospective new players.

The Rise of the Tomb Raider trailer shows Lara dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her encountering undead at the end of the previous game. This spoils the big supernatural twist at the end of Tomb Raider.

The Deus Ex: Mankind Divided trailer has several scenes showing the aftermath of the previous game, again spoiling things for newcomers to the franchise.

Chances are any trailer for a sequel (and Heavensward is essentially a sequel to the story of A Realm Reborn) to a story-driven game series will feature some amount of spoilers simply by virtue of the prior events giving the context for the new story. As someone else in this thread already pointed out, the very fact we're even going to Ishgard is technically a spoiler since the entire 2.0 story arc has involved Ishgard as an isolationist state. There's very little at all they could show in a trailer for Heavensward without spoiling something for new players.

[mp-please]

Surprised people are complaining about this and not on flames of truth, after all t12 is actually hard to clear compared to breezing through MSQ. And tbh sultana death flag was up since 2.2 ish.

but now I can't share it with my non-playing friends to get them interested in the game

Why not show them the gameplay, features, overworld to get them interested instead? Story is fine but c'mon, your friends want to play with you.

[Twivana]

One thing that has REALLY erked me bad about all ya'lls posts is calling it a TRAILER its NOT a TRAILER it is the opening MOVIE CINEMATIC FOR HEAVENSWARD! You know when you start up the game and you don't click start right a way and it plays the opening cinematic/movie? THATS WHAT THIS IS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRDT0sCpnUA

You want the TRAILER?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68CNzwinqlg
I might have broken the links heh

[Noxifer]

to the OP, you do realize IF they install heavensward and run the game without choosing start that video is exactly what will play right? if you are so concerned you might want to warn to click/hit start so as not to let the video play because that video will take the place of the End of an Era/A Realm Reborn video we have in the game now.

Mmmyeah. One problem though. The first time you start the game. The very first time. You can't skip the intro video. Trust me. Just installed the game on my new laptop not two days ago. Hit "Start game", the intro starts playing. Right-click doesn't interrupt it, Escape doesn't interrupt it, Enter doesn't interrupt it. I think I tried pretty much all the keys except for alt+F4 or Ctrl+Alt+Del. Why was I so desperate to skip it? Mainly because it slapped me in the face with a reminder that I'd forgotten to switch to Japanese audio. ^^; And because it's long and annoying and I've already seen it several times.

Common sense tells me that the Heavensward intro won't play at the title screen for a completely new player who buys the complete edition.

But today's trailer, and people's opinions in this thread, lend credence to the absurd motion that it might happen.

That would be immensely stupid.

Common sense actually kinda says that it would o.o If I install any other game + expansions, the latest installed expansion's logo and intro/loading screen is what will take precedence. And if you buy both ARR and Heavensward, why wouldn't you install Heavensward while you're already installing stuff anyway?

And I agree with the 'it would be stupid' part ^^; While there is a certain point to the whole argument that a new player wouldn't know what the intro/trailer is about until 10% into the story.... by the time you get to that point, I doubt you'd have forgotten that scene from the intro/trailer, not with the emotional impact that flashback is supposed to have -- even if you don't know her, it's fairly obvious that it's something important that happened, whether that little lady happens to be axe dude's daughter, girlfriend, liege lady or friend.

I also disagree that "this is the same as the 2.0 trailer/intro showing off the end of 1.0". By the time we could play 2.0, 1.0 was gone. You couldn't play through that story even if you wanted to. But for this, 2.0 isn't gone. It's a required part to get to 3.0.
The Ishgardian scenery isn't as much of a spoiler though, since afaik expansions always include new areas added to the game. Meaning it's no big surprise that you'll get to areas you couldn't get to before.

Personally, I don't mind the scenes being there. But that doesn't mean I can't see why someone would mind.

[Clarkamite]

Maybe I needed to read that article further but I'm not sure how that even made sense. How can you study that the way it was studied?

"Data from here suggests this person A liked this book more than this person B and person A had it spoiled for them." I feel like that's reaching a bit too far. What if that story more fit person A's preferences with story? Of course they're going to enjoy it more than person B. I'm not sure, the data feels really circumstantial.

The only way I can see that working is if you could make each test subject read a story, gauge their reaction, erase their memory and then have them read it again only this time with spoilers and see if their reaction is different.