First zone of Heavensward

[Gunspec]

So was it confirmed that everyone starting 3.0 will be following the same linear questline from the beginning? Or will we have a choice at the beginning that splits us up a bit?

I thought that one of the smartest moves in 2.0 was splitting the players across 3 starting zones, and having a unique level 1-10 storyline for each city, so that new players weren't all on top of each other. Certainly there will be fewer level 50 players in 3.0 than there were level 1 players in 2.0, but it'll kind of stink if there are 200 people all in one zone, stacked on top of the same npc. Or those quests that spawn a group of enemies in the field... it will be a neverending stream of badguys spawning out of the ground.

The only mmo expansions that I've played on launch day were WoW expacs, and those always split the player base either by having the first zone host both Horde and Alliance hubs and quest areas (burning crusade, pandaland), or by having two unique starting zones to choose from (Wrath, Cata, WoD).

Edit: Hehehe, gonna be a lot of MidgardSWARMERS, am I right? :P

"Both Coerthas West Highlands and the lower layer of Abalathia are accessible at lv50; you can choose where to start. This is to split up the massive number of players that will be doing the main scenario at the same time (both paths will converge later on)."

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...iew_at_nantes/

Turns out they ARE doing this. I hope both paths will be playable eventually, but it is definitely a good idea for that initial first day rush.

[Enkidoh]

It will definitely be a linear questline, at least at first - and will almost definitely start in the Intercessory, the room at Dragonhead where we left off the 2.55 story. FFXI showed that expansion questlines are always linear and that everyone follows it in the same way. The starting stories are 'split' because we have a choice whereabouts we start our adventure. This is pretty much just a continuation, so no choice where you begin.

Really, congestion at the start is only to be expected, it's the nature of the beast (FFXI always suffered from that for the first few days to a week after an expansion pack launched) - if it's that much of a problem just wait a week or two before starting it (you'd have plenty to occupy you enough as it is getting all your existing Jobs to the new level cap of 60 after all).

[Gunspec]

Snip

Well I was thinking they could give us two quest chains that lead to different parts of a zone, and while we would eventually do both, it would be a way to split up players for that first hour or two of congestion. But yeah, I never got to any of the expansion content in FFXI, so I was curious how they handled it there. It'll certainly be congested, but I really hope they have SOME kind of mechanic to lessen the impact that will obviously happen.

Hmm, if it becomes too bad, there is always fishing.

[Warlyx]

its gonna suck the first 2 weeks , 50's and ppl that leveled new jobs from 30....but lots of ppl on early access plus since u cant still get updates just doing a bit of dmg , and objects on the ground are personal , wont be that bad...

btw u can form parties and quest toguether too ^^

[Grey_Cain]

Well I was thinking they could give us two quest chains that lead to different parts of a zone, and while we would eventually do both, it would be a way to split up players for that first hour or two of congestion. But yeah, I never got to any of the expansion content in FFXI, so I was curious how they handled it there. It'll certainly be congested, but I really hope they have SOME kind of mechanic to lessen the impact that will obviously happen.

Hmm, if it becomes too bad, there is always fishing.

There really isn't much for them to split up at the start. As Enki said, we all finished at the same place, and we're all likely going to be starting from the same place. FFXI actually starts and continues the same way. Three different city states to start, players from each state has individual quests for that city that eventually take them to the central city, then everything thereafter is all the same no matter what your starting city. I never finished any of the XI expansions (quit shortly after Wings of the Goddess), but they tended to all progress the same way at least in the beginning; one quest line that's the same no matter the starting city state. From what I read, they didn't end any differently for the different cities, either.

[Neri]

They could do like to progress this quest, you need the recommendation of 3 npc. And from that, you just start talking to any of the 3 first and once finished all quests from 3 npc, you can hand the recommendation to the original quest. Maybe kinda like as in Zodiac weapon step.

[Gunspec]

They could do like to progress this quest, you need the recommendation of 3 npc. And from that, you just start talking to any of the 3 first and once finished all quests from 3 npc, you can hand the recommendation to the original quest. Maybe kinda like as in Zodiac weapon step.

That's sort of what I was thinking. Something like: 1. Investigate dragons 2. Smack some beastmen 3. Win the Lalafell punting tournament. Do them in any order, then when you've finished all three quest chains, the story continues in a more linear fashion. Just something to split the initial wave of players into different parts of a map, so we don't have a huge pile up on every quest giver.

Although... I just realized that job quests could fill that role too. In the beginning of 2.0, we all had different jobs with quests every few hours, and that sent us in different directions. I guess it depends on how often job quests occur in 3.0.

[Yumi_umi]

I cant see npc help
Its gonna be laggier than odin fates when it 1st came out LOL
Chat log will explode too.

[Canadane]

There's going to be the people who care not for the storyline and race through, if not outright skip the cutscenes, just to unlock their latest trials and dungeons to run.
There'll be the people who sit back and soak in every cutscene, talk with every NPC between each main scenario cutscene (guilty of this) and generally take their sweet time.
There'll be the ones that race to the new job giving NPCs as soon as it's available to them and go back to Haukke and start levelling that.
There will be the crafters and gatherers looking to earn their tomestones while others are busy with the main scenario.

So even if everyone has a linear questline without much branching (I'm suspecting no branching tbh), there's player based branching off individual interests and playstyles.

That being said, Coerthas and Ishguard will be so packed on day 1. I do not foresee the zones stability lasting long!

[Warlyx]

class quests



90.000 , 3102 , ect




Fun times ahead no doubt hahaha