6.0 Predictions: Will it be Garlemald, Sharlayan, or Meracydia?

[Veloran]

And my only problem for Sharlayan is that its such a small island which means that we are almost certain to be getting two places if Sharlayan is added in.

I would bet that Sharlayan and Hingashi will be the two halves of 6.0. We're heading into the finale of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark storyline, and both states are some of the oldest and most learned areas of the world, and are also both extreme isolationists. Also, apparently, there's an island nearby in the Northern Empty where the Roegadyn believe the world originated from, could be relevant. Basically, as far as we know places like Meracydia and the New World don't really have any connection to Hydaelyn/Zodiark, so that leaves us with locations that may at least know much more than they're letting on about the conflict.

Unless they just go with space Allagans on the moon or something.

[JeanneOrnitier]

I'd love to go to Meracydia, but even more than I can't see why we would go there, I can't see why the Garleans would go there. Even if we don't go to Garlemald proper things are still building up to a big confrontation with them and have been for a while. Wherever we're going next we'll probably go because Garlemald is doing something there, and I can't imagine what they'd be doing in a place that's 95% wasteland.

[Rosenstrauch]

Unless they just go with space Allagans on the moon or something.

At the end of 5.3, something will happen that causes Zodiark to go berserk. He sacrifices all the Amaurotine souls in his possession to try and break the seal keeping him inside the moon, and in doing so unwittingly causes life to surge into existence on the surface of the moon, transforming it from a barren white/gray rock to an environment more lush, alien, and varied than we've ever seen before. And so we have to stick all the Scions on that giant boat in Gyr Abania and send it to the moon. And up there, we'll run into the long thought to be extinct Hummingway race, who live in a sublunarian kingdom and are actually the longest lived race of them all: Some were even around from before Hydaelyn split the world!

[Cilia]

I'd love to go to Meracydia, but even more than I can't see why we would go there, I can't see why the Garleans would go there. Even if we don't go to Garlemald proper things are still building up to a big confrontation with them and have been for a while. Wherever we're going next we'll probably go because Garlemald is doing something there, and I can't imagine what they'd be doing in a place that's 95% wasteland.

As it stands the Garlean Empire as a unified fighting force has been defanged. We're dealing with individual Legions in the Sorrow of Werlyt / Resistance Weapon questlines, each of which is pursuing their own agendas... because the Emperor was assassinated and the named heir abdicated the throne. After those two questlines are wrapped up (and they will be after 5.5), it's anyone's guess as to what the Empire is going to do as a whole.

Splinter into various fiefdoms ruled by warlord ex-Legatuses?
Rally behind a new Emperor?

Either way, the civil war it's currently embroiled in should leave the Empire a non-threat for the foreseeable future. Unlike the Varis / Titus war, to our knowledge this one is a free-for-all among all the surviving Legatuses (minus Noah van Gabranth, whose exact agenda remains unclear).

The ones to really watch out for are Zenos and his accomplice, whose agenda(s) also remain unclear beyond Zenos desiring Zodiark's power.

[Morningstar1337]

There are NO confirmed ties between Hingashi and Mercaydia. The lore book states that Hingashi was most likely formed as nation by refugees fleeing the collapse of the Allagan Empire, not Meracydian ones.

I see, thank you for the correction.

This does mean that Hingashi is in the same case as the New World for 6.0 and that is my "Evil Sharlayan Empire" theory comes true, then it is slightly more likely for 7.0

[FrightfulNight]

One possibility is that this line was a red herring, there where a lot of red herrings leading up to ShB, in fact one of the lines for the first trailer was that it was the finale for the Garlean story.

Another possibility is that line in the first trailer was true and Garlemald is more or less defeated in 5.5 with maybe some factions surviving and forming a Byzantine like nation (real world conatation being that Rome survived long after the capitol fell by splitting in two, while the western half fell the eastern half now centered around Constantinople would go on to exist for another millennia).

Finally another possibility is that this does not mean Islabard is off the table for 6.0 just that They are subverting our expectations with Garlemald which could support that defeat in 5.5 theory and that 6.0 will still take us to Islabard but now on top of the conclusion for the Hydalin/Zodiark story it will also be restoring order there or trying to prepare for the for the rise of a new faction due to all three continents being weakened in the war and in a precarious place(like i mentioned earlier the Newly formed Rashidun Caliphate completely beating two of the most powerful empires in history because they weakened themselves with a costly war and succession crisis) Perhaps this new threat could even be from Sharlyan in a later expansion if you are so inclined.

Either way we have locations in Islabard and Garlemald proper that have models, this usually points to them being prominent in the next expansion, example, the vault being shown in the ARR patches, and The palace in Ala Mhigo being shown in patch 3.5, so they obviously have plans for it, and this is not just the vague palace anymore but also the capitol and what appears to be a field in Islabard.

[Theodric]

I just hope we'll be exploring more of the Source. Ilsabard is such a large part of the game world that I'd be surprised if we didn't go there at some point, though it need not necessarily be in 6.0. I'd be interested in heading off to Sharlayan and/or seeing more of Hingashi though I'd be lying if I said that Ilsabard wasn't at the top of my list.

I'm tentatively expecting another expansion that splits the focus across different regions - there's still quite a lot of plot points tied to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story arc after all and that's supposedly coming to a conclusion alongside 6.0, potentially expanding all the way up until 6.3.

Meracydia is a possibility, I suppose. I'm envisioning it as being along the lines of the forgotten continent in FFIX, complete with ancient ruins of civilisations long since lost to the world. Though of course it might end up being completely different.

[Lauront]

Something about the diction in that first sentence is oddly familiar...

Ahem. Without further input I'm currently betting on Meracydia. Further down in the interview Yoshi-P says we should "get a refresher on Heavensward" as a hint to what's coming next. Aside from Meracydia being the home of Bahamut and Tiamat, pretty much everything on Azys Lla is either explicitly or implicitly Meracydian in origin. One of the driving forces in Heavensward was "dragons," so the general idea is "more dragons" - where better to go than the homeland of the franchise's two most prominent?

Sharlayan is more of a long shot, since it wasn't very prominent in the story. We did go to their abandoned colony out in Dravania, but other than the Great Gubal Library and Matoya's presence, excepting optional content like Eureka.

As Yoshi-P implies, expectations will be subverted and Garlemald is not on the table.

As for what's going to happen, I don't have enough information to reach any sort of hypothesis. The only cosmic-level threat on the table right now is the Sound that would have destroyed the world if not for Zodiark's creation. Zenos will continue to be a thorn in our side, but more worrisome to me is the enigmatic figure now serving as his accomplice. Said figure claimed to have knowledge of the Final Days, albeit "mostly secondhand."

There just isn't enough information to reach a conclusion one way or another, if you ask me.

Sharlayan did feature in the AST quests as well. Yes, those are optional, but they did give a lot of insight into its current state. I think Meracydia and Sharlayan are both candidates, primarily because Sharlayan is only really the size of a city-state and it is the most learned region in the known world when it comes to magic, plus the seat of the Archons and there are all the obvious nods to Amaurot, so it is amenable to being paired up with some larger location, be it Meracydia, the moon, or somewhere else, and not as a split, but as the means of getting to this somewhere else. Meanwhile, Meracydia is a land of mystery and both these regions could be given a distinctive IX vibe.

My guess, for now, is that 5.4-5.5 will get Garlemald into a position where it's on the backburner, stabilised and ready, along with the rest Ilsabard, to be visited in 7.0. That way it doesn't have to be the destination for 6.0. If they have any intention of going by the historical Nerva, and intend to have this "Lord Nerva" be a big player, he could be a transitional power figure.

With that being said, I do wonder if Yoshi is not referring more specifically to Elidibus's role in HW. There was also the "meeting" with Hydaelyn. So both featured pretty prominently and both tie into the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc very explicitly. As you say, at the moment there's not really much information to base speculation off for the future locale, and my only real question is will they find a way to get the moon involved in 6.0 rather than later.

I just hope we'll be exploring more of the Source. Ilsabard is such a large part of the game world that I'd be surprised if we didn't go there at some point, though it need not necessarily be in 6.0. I'd be interested in heading off to Sharlayan and/or seeing more of Hingashi though I'd be lying if I said that Ilsabard wasn't at the top of my list.

I'm tentatively expecting another expansion that splits the focus across different regions - there's still quite a lot of plot points tied to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story arc after all and that's supposedly coming to a conclusion alongside 6.0, potentially expanding all the way up until 6.3.

Meracydia is a possibility, I suppose. I'm envisioning it as being along the lines of the forgotten continent in FFIX, complete with ancient ruins of civilisations long since lost to the world. Though of course it might end up being completely different.

I'm hoping they go for something like that too. I do want to see Hingashi one day.

[Sonikku]

Everyone was expecting Garlemald / Ilsabard in the lead-up to Shadowbringers, given it was the last unexplored part of the Three Great Continents and the engine of conflict driving most if not all of the story, in addition to its leader now having an excuse to go on the offensive against the rest of the known world.

Instead they took an Alliance raid, two raid storylines, an early 4.0 sidequest, and mixed them with the ubiquitous Ascian influence, then shipped us off to an alternate world.

Nobody has much of an idea as to what's going to happen beyond 5.3 or why at the moment; only the nebulous hints that they will be "go[ing] against players' expectations" and to "get a refresher on Heavensward." Make of those what you will.

This Xpack SHOULD have been Garlemald in my opinion. I love ShB, but this storyline really feels like it should have been what they went out on at level 99. The garlean empire was made by Emet Selch just like Allag before it to advance the even bigger stakes we're grappling with now. Going back to what is basically a border dispute without the ascians to back it up just falls flat. And Varis is so casually cast aside... We never got to see him do anything but talk.

Stormblood was hyping up a war with these guys. How cool would it have been if 5.0 had been the full scale war expansion with the empire only to get to the end and upon confronting Varis, learning just what the true stakes are. Perfect lead into ShB. Oh well...

[RyuDragnier]

I would bet that Sharlayan and Hingashi will be the two halves of 6.0. We're heading into the finale of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark storyline, and both states are some of the oldest and most learned areas of the world, and are also both extreme isolationists. Also, apparently, there's an island nearby in the Northern Empty where the Roegadyn believe the world originated from, could be relevant. Basically, as far as we know places like Meracydia and the New World don't really have any connection to Hydaelyn/Zodiark, so that leaves us with locations that may at least know much more than they're letting on about the conflict.

Unless they just go with space Allagans on the moon or something.

Bolding the part I feel we must talk about. Considering how much of the game's lore leads back to the Allagan Empire and the events in Meracydia, it feels heavily that Meracydia itself is special for a reason. The threads of the Ascians, Dalamud, Bahamut, the Warring Triad, Crystal Tower (Cloud of Darkness and the voidsent specifically), Azys Lla, the Allagan Empire, primal summonings, all of it leads to Meracydia. It feels like too much of a coincidence that multiple major threats that the planet has ever seen come from there. There has to be something there, something big, because there's no way that it's mere coincidence that 4 Elder Primals came from there. As for the New World...Blue Magic looks an awful lot like creation magic considering you're casting spells that mortals shouldn't be able to do out of nothing.