So our character has... SPOILERS

[Sylve]

I hope they do some kind of time skip in the next expansion

I want to see Alphinaud and Red Alphinaud as adults

I honestly hope that 7.0s big feature is a rebuild/upgrade of the engine.
They've been saying for years that they're hitting hard limits on things they can add.

We're still technically running on spaghet code leftovers from the 1.0 to 2.0 transition.

PSO2 New Genesis shows how an MMO can do a big engine overhaul and a sequel while retaining access to the original game.
NGS success or failure aside, the concept of having XIV ARR to Endwalker as a separate thing to whatever we get from 7.0 onwards is actually a pretty decent way to do it.

An entirely new story unfettered by what has come before is a prime opportunity to do a massive visual/Engine upgrade.
XIV is 10 years old now including 1.0. Not even counting the years of development work prior to launch using even older technologies.
To want to do another 10 years of XIV, they kind of have to upgrade the core of the game.
Even that other MMO was forced to upgrade it's engine in it's recent history.

[Ransom]

I wonder who's charging the aetheryte fees in Ultima Thule...?

Back when Shadowbringers came out I wondered about this, contemplating some poor little Lala accountant in an office somewhere in Uldah trying to figure out just where the hell 'Norvrandt' was. Now I imagine him arriving at work one morning to run the day's Aetherite fees and...

"Mare Lamentorum? Ultima Thule...? Hey Charlie!"

"Yeah Phil?"

"Where the heck are Mare Lamentorum and Ultima Thule?"

"Never hoid 'O da second one... First one's on da moon."

"On the moo..."

(He gives up and goes back home for the day...)

[Rongway]

I wonder who's charging the aetheryte fees in Ultima Thule...?

This is taking the loresplanation just a little too far; of course there isn't someone collecting aetheryte maintenance fees from travelers as they arrive at Ultima Thule--and we're probably not even Teleporting to Ultima Thule as far as the game universe is concerned. But the game is the game and we need aetherytes in places where there maybe shouldn't be aetherytes just because we have a certain expectation of convenience that new zones need to uphold because nobody wants to teleport to the place where we began the journey to Ultima Thule, fly into the place with the thing, and then get on to the thing, every single time they want to go there--if it even is far enough in the story that the thing is not just assumed to still be at Ultima Thule.