Where are we heading to next?

[ClaireFaye]

Ok, so the top theories of where we're heading to for 7.0+ would be either Meracydia or the Void/other shards. With 6.1 we got some mention of Meracydia and especially with the Void. (Seriously Y'shtola was starting to freak me out with how obsessed she was over this)
While I know that it's still far too early to be sure, but where are we going to head to next? I can't see how the story will be connecting us to Meracydia just yet, and I feel that the New World is still too early and we've heard barely anything about tit. But I don't see how we can go to the Void when it is just an empty void. The reason they could make the First work was because they still had that one continent with actual people surviving on it. Despite that it was in a dying land, they still had different environments and zones for us to visit... just enough that we had a whole story and they were able to add onto that with the Eden storyline.
But the void... there's nothing left of it but empty darkness and surrounded by void sent. I don't see how we can honestly have an entire expansion about it. Now, granted I think that it would be awesome and would love the chance to be able to go there if they could make it work... but unless some kind of city did manage to survive there or so many centuries... I don't see how we could have an entire expansion of the void. I was thinking that maybe the Void could be like the new Eureka or Bozja... but I thought that Corvos seemed more likely for that for Endwalker. Then I thought that while exploring parts of the 13th, the Golbez look-alike escaped with the fiends and settled down in Meracydia and we have to go after them. And the entire 7.0 expansion could be us fighting him and at the last we send him back to the Void where we learn the fate of Azdaja? But I honestly don't think that the archfiends would survive that long, I do think they are being set up for the new trial fights in 6.2 and onwards.
Sorry, I know my thoughts are all over the place, but what do you think? Are we going to the Void or Meracydia... or maybe someplace new?

[Kesey]

So hear me out here.

What if the next patch launches the new dungeon immediately and it's into the 13th for an expedition.

We fight our way through 3 bosses, using Estinien, Y'shtola, and king (who will flex roll) only to run head long into Golbez, who reveals the missing dragon is his now and is a shadow dragon.

In an attempt to save our lives we are forbidden from going back, cutting off the storyline into 13th immediately.

My point here, is it is way too early to really tell as they can easily be doing this as a misdirect.

[Denishia]

My vote, sitting here in a .1 patch, is that 7.0 will be Meracydia (and anyone that thinks that Meracydia being the expy for Africa means that we won't have vast city-states with giant castles and fortresses and complex kingdoms shows how small-minded they are) with some active Void Gates and/or other regions of Islabard as the other zones, with an off-chance of the New World. I think that anything set in the Void will not be a full expansion's worth - at most one of the zones for 7.0 if the resolution to the Void plot threads is kept for 7.0, or some instanced fights in the MSQ and a Four Lords from IV and Golbez themed Trial Series - which I wonder if the Trial Series this time will be optional or fully integrated into the MSQ.

Edit: Oh yes, I agree w/ Kesey. A Void-themed dungeon. Just not sure if 6.2 or not. The real question will be if the final dungeon of 6.5 will carry on the tradition of having Garlean enemies, or if we can finally put that long-running XIV trope to rest.

[ClaireFaye]

My vote, sitting here in a .1 patch, is that 7.0 will be Meracydia (and anyone that thinks that Meracydia being the expy for Africa means that we won't have vast city-states with giant castles and fortresses and complex kingdoms shows how small-minded they are) with some active Void Gates and/or other regions of Islabard as the other zones, with an off-chance of the New World. I think that anything set in the Void will not be a full expansion's worth - at most one of the zones for 7.0 if the resolution to the Void plot threads is kept for 7.0, or some instanced fights in the MSQ and a Four Lords from IV and Golbez themed Trial Series - which I wonder if the Trial Series this time will be optional or fully integrated into the MSQ.

That sounds awesome! But I can't help but hope that we will be able to go to the Void and take Vrtra along with us because I would love to travel with him and hopefully find a way to save Azdaja. I mean, a part of me really wants them to find a way to restore at least a part of the 13th, you know to give them something to work with? Here's a crazy theory I came up with though: I was watching Atlantis: The Lost Empire and in the beginning, a giant crystal was able to create a protective barrier to protect the people from the flood and slowly sank beneath the waves. What if, and I'm going into tin-foil hat territory, what if a city or nation was able to do the same and survive all these years beneath the darkness in a protective shell? They had been fighting against the Voidsent all that time but it's a losing battle? If they had something like that, then we would have a foothold and slowly be able to work our way out from there?

[shadowclasper]

So the places that have opened up to us in this patch alone or are suggested to be opening up

1) The unexplored portions of the three brothers continent
2) The sea of stars (Nero is all over that, if he doesn't turn on the moon's hyperhopper engines just to see what happens I'll be surprised)
3) The New World
4) Meracydia
5) Other shards.

I suspect that we'll be dealing with the void primarily in this post game set.

[Kranel_San]

Patch 6.2 will bring the first criterion dungeon. At the same time patch 6.1 prepares us to leap into the void. Coincedance? I think not...
Maybe the MSQ will introduce us to the relic content in which criterion dungeons will also play a role, but who knows?

[YianKutku]

Honestly I have to think that 7.0 would probably not be a Void focused expansion, even if it might have Void elements in the narrative.

I base this off of the 2.x patches, which I feel are the closest in terms of narrative structure: the chapter is done, and now we check for loose plot threads that we can build up into a new chapter. Which means the 2.1 and 6.1 patches are, in a way, noodling around by exploring the metaphysics of the setting: in 2.1 it was about the nature of Primals and how Good King Moggle Mog contradicted the existing beliefs (also Elidibus), and in 6.1 it appears to be the nature of interdimensional travel with a focus on the Thirteenth.

If we look at the subsequent patches, 2.2 was the arrival of the Doman refugees and the summoning of Leviathan, which didn't really impinge on Heavensward much, except for the news of the new Emperor (who turns up in mid-HW for a single scene). 2.3 was the brewing political conflict in Ul'dah and the summoning of Ramuh, resulting in Alphinaud creating the Crystal Braves, which was a prominent and yet not quite major part of Heavensward. 2.4 is when the Ishgard plot thread really comes into play, with Ysayle's first appearance, and 2.5 is famously Keeper Of The Lake, Nabriales, Steps Of Faith, and the Bloody Banquet.

So my speculation is the whole talk about exploring the Thirteenth and such will be either a relatively minor part of 7.0, akin to the Crystal Braves subplot in Heavensward, and some new development will send us to somewhere else in Etheirys that Emet-Selch had told us about. Popular guesses would be Meracydia or the New World (in that order of likelihood), but I'm also considering Aerghmus hanging around Limsa Lominsa talking about rumours from Aerslant.

The full exploration of the Thirteenth will either be conducted in 8.0 (or even 9.0), although I do think we'll manage to make significant progress in the 6.x patches, perhaps managing to establish a forward base. But then we'll either stall out, or be distracted by something more serious. If I may speculate even more wildly, perhaps we'll find Azdaja, but she gets tossed out the the Thirteenth onto the Source deep in Meracydia, and now we have to find her and rescue her.

[Denishia]

I just hope whatever we do end up doing in the Void, the game will remember Cyella and the Adventuring proto-Scions gathered on the First and we get a humorous scene of Beq Lugg explaining that their porxie drones sent to investigate the Thirteenth for its current status (and survivors) caught footage of whatever we were up to in there.

[KageTokage]

I'm leaning towards 7.0 either being Meracydia or Ilsabard; the former possibly following on the current threads related to the void and the First Brood, and the latter to offer closure to the matter of the remaining Garlean legions and the overall political state of the continent following the Empire's fall.

Also, anyone who thinks Meracydia would be "dull" hasn't done much research into African countries. Several of them have European influences due to foreign settlers and I think the same is likely to hold true here given that it was mentioned that settlers from the north were what sparked the initial conflict that lead to Tiamat and Bahamut becoming entwined with the affairs of man.

[Denishia]

And even if we ignore 'European' - there are more than enough cultural groups and past empires all across the African continent, be they West African and inspired by the Igbo, anything Bantu, Radz-at-Han's trading partner a coastal metropolis of white coral palaces inspired by Zanzibar, maybe in Northern Meracydia is the world's richest man from the equivalent of Timbuktu...

I do hope, however, that the Twelve are remembered in Meracydia specifically as a cadre of demons or evil gods, thanks to their association with the invading Allagans, no matter what Myths of the Realm reveal. Mostly because I'd think it hilarious. And a chance for remixes a la Eden or FFX-2's Dark Aeons.