Dawntrail: Hopes, expectations and disappointments.

[Nav_Fae]

I think it's weird to go on a Summer Vacation after literally handing us our own private Summer Island.

Also them disbanding the Scions they just never should have done.

[Oizen]

6 open world zones divided in half and locked behind story progression
About 7 or 8 dungeons
3 Trials on release
2 Extremes on release
A story quest

[SomeGuy22]

I think they're mostly copes instead of hopes, but eh

Hopes:
1 - Devs chilling out with the job homogenization and throwing the 2-min meta in the garbage PLEASE
2 - Hrothgal
3 - Ilvl sync being a bit tighter so older content doesn't keel over and drop dead
4 - Sense of wonder. Really capture the feeling of adventure that I think has been missing from the game for a while

Disappointments:
Pretty much the same as OP's. Other than the same ol' Scions still with us (doesn't bother me that much) and the apparent lack of exploratory zones (it bothers me a lot), it's still too early to tell.

[AnotherPerson]

My main expectation is that this will not stay as a 'happy go lucky' expansion and things will take a turn at some point, possibly with an accidental death of one of the scions. After the high notes in SHB and EW, it feels weird going on a 'summer vacation' expansion.

This is my guess, but I don't think they're going to put an accidental death but rather a trip that turns into discovering a new bad villian & subvillian arc.
It's the start of a new expansion, but also the start of a new story arc expansion. The Ascians and the entire base game + 4 expansions were all focused towards telling the entire story arc of Zodiark vs Hyadelyn with their own mini plot-line region bubbles in the expansion. I figure it's going to be similar to how ARR works, we'll start off on an adventure and discovery before being involved into a major plot. I don't think we'll have something as drastic as a scion dead after killing off the universe-ending calamity in Endwalker, but we'll have an impactful villian that sets up the story for future villians or the arc ends in a uncertain note and concludes to some degree in patch 7.3.


As for expectations, after seeing a Hrothgar with a straight back walking instead of a hunchback on the teaser trailer... I'm really hopeful to see a lot of good updates for Hrothgar in the near future.

I sort of expect the new caster to be a Shaman / Warlock based on the region. The TMNT shirt on the other hand... unless the hint is turtle, which refers to Tortuga (Translates to Tortoise, which is an island known for Caribbean Piracy -- thus Corsair/Pirate/Conquistador job), then the other hint could be just mutant. We could end up learning the something akin to art of the mutants, based on the inscribing formulations to increase aetheric density / utilize rituals of the New World to transform the body to empower melee combat (something like a totem warrior / half-shape shifting druid). This would then coincide with how even if the New World is affected by The Final Days, they had no trouble putting down the Catastrophes on their own due to the unique ritual and casting techniques in that location to mitigate the effects of being drowned in Dynamis.

[DixieBellOCE]

This is my guess, but I don't think they're going to put an accidental death but rather a trip that turns into discovering a new bad villian & subvillian arc.
It's the start of a new expansion, but also the start of a new story arc expansion. The Ascians and the entire base game + 4 expansions were all focused towards telling the entire story arc of Zodiark vs Hyadelyn with their own mini plot-line region bubbles in the expansion. I figure it's going to be similar to how ARR works, we'll start off on an adventure and discovery before being involved into a major plot. I don't think we'll have something as drastic as a scion dead after killing off the universe-ending calamity in Endwalker, but we'll have an impactful villian that sets up the story for future villians or the arc ends in a uncertain note and concludes to some degree in patch 7.3.


As for expectations, after seeing a Hrothgar with a straight back walking instead of a hunchback on the teaser trailer... I'm really hopeful to see a lot of good updates for Hrothgar in the near future.

I sort of expect the new caster to be a Shaman / Warlock based on the region. The TMNT shirt on the other hand... unless the hint is turtle, which refers to Tortuga (Translates to Tortoise, which is an island known for Caribbean Piracy -- thus Corsair/Pirate/Conquistador job), then the other hint could be just mutant. We could end up learning the something akin to art of the mutants, based on the inscribing formulations to increase aetheric density / utilize rituals of the New World to transform the body to empower melee combat (something like a totem warrior / half-shape shifting druid). This would then coincide with how even if the New World is affected by The Final Days, they had no trouble putting down the Catastrophes on their own due to the unique ritual and casting techniques in that location to mitigate the effects of being drowned in Dynamis.

The ninja turtle could also be a reference to the game 'Turtles in Time' where they go on a trip to the swallows compass to find an artifact from a Geomancer.
It was a good shirt choice, lots of speculation!

[Iscah]

They really let us think that disband thing was a declaration of intention for the cast, with a story explaination, and let that idea float, even build on it with that idea of the start of a whole new story. As someone who expected a lot from that paradigm, this killed my excitation during the trailer.

It was never portrayed like that in the game. Scion-disliking players latched onto it as a hope, but it was made quite clear in the initial "disbanding" scene that they were doing it for outward appearances rather than a real intention to go separate ways forever. It was the organisational equivalent of faking their own death so people would stop expecting them to be a major actor on the world politics stage.

Additionally, they did go off to pursue their own activities for a while, but we're not going to see those parts when we're not with them.

And finally, because they are pursuing independent agendas at this point, it seems that may have set them up for different Scions to have gotten independently hired by different factions in this new region.

[CNitsah]

It was never portrayed like that in the game. Scion-disliking players latched onto it as a hope, but it was made quite clear in the initial "disbanding" scene that they were doing it for outward appearances rather than a real intention to go separate ways forever. It was the organisational equivalent of faking their own death so people would stop expecting them to be a major actor on the world politics stage.

Additionally, they did go off to pursue their own activities for a while, but we're not going to see those parts when we're not with them.

And finally, because they are pursuing independent agendas at this point, it seems that may have set them up for different Scions to have gotten independently hired by different factions in this new region.

I disagree with that. The whole "we will go our own way and can't go adventuring all together" (especially the second part) scene was not needed for for a disband plot. Plus when you leave the game, and look at live letter, they did play with that idea during pre 6.1 and 6.2.

I get tired of people coming with subtext explanation when it suits them "But it's obvious the Zenos dialog at the end of world talk about the player", but conveniently ignoring subtext when it comes to that kind of things. You can disagree that was the intent, but you can't say that was not there. I mean, a LOT of people took taht as a declaration of intention. And since they never really left during the patch, it felt like it was meant for the next expansion.

[Heroman3003]

I disagree with that. The whole "we will go our own way and can't go adventuring all together" (especially the second part) scene was not needed for for a disband plot. Plus when you leave the game, and look at live letter, they did play with that idea during pre 6.1 and 6.2.

I get tired of people coming with subtext explanation when it suits them "But it's obvious the Zenos dialog at the end of world talk about the player", but conveniently ignoring subtext when it comes to that kind of things. You can disagree that was the intent, but you can't say that was not there. I mean, a LOT of people took taht as a declaration of intention. And since they never really left during the patch, it felt like it was meant for the next expansion.

Idk, they literally say explicitly in same cutscene that they'll spend some time apart doing their own thing, but whenever needed can rely on one-another for help on moment's notice or to come together when realm needs help, and that's how the patches ended up playing out (although we focused more on Y'shtola and Estinien specifically in those, rest of scions basically coming and going as trust setups needed them). If anything, new expansion runs on same idea better than patches - the scion groups are called in separately, but towards same place and for similar reasons.

[Iscah]

I get tired of people coming with subtext explanation when it suits them "But it's obvious the Zenos dialog at the end of world talk about the player", but conveniently ignoring subtext when it comes to that kind of things.

People see subtext in different things. Personally I strongly dislike the "oh, they're really speaking to the player" thing with Zenos – although I can't deny that they may well have written it that way.

And disagreeing with subtext is not the same as ignoring subtext.

The Scions did exactly what they said they would do. Split apart for a while, work on their own projects, but still come to each others' aid when needed for big projects. And even then they're coming and going, not all setting forth in one group at one time, or involved in smaller plots of their own like Myths of the Realm.

[DamianFatale]

1. Female Hrothgar
2. Corsair as a job
3. Meracydia Zones
4. Exploratory Zones
5. Geomancer. Geomancer would fit in so well with the lore, so I really hope its there.
6. Exploratory Missions instead of variant dungeons, but we know they will sell us short again. :/

Those are my main wishes.