Revelations from JP Fan Fest (January 2024)

[Denishia]

The other mamoojal at the bottom- which from the picture's composition makes it a logical deduction that he is the other royal rival claimant to the throne who hired Thancred and Urianger. Hazarding a guess, he's the natural-born child of Gulool Ja Ja and it'll be interesting to see if his attitude towards his adopted sister is amicable or deeply contentious - the writing is full of possibilities. The catboy in white might be from Sharlayan but I think is more likely to be a native of North Tural and some sort of faction leader or important there. Our key guy in Heritage Found I'd wager. Brown-haired girl has Ellone from Eshtar *cough* Mikoto from Terra *cough* knowing nothing else she's probably connected to Solution Nine.

Solution Nine. Yeah that's a shock. Not that there's a more advanced than the Garleans purple-themed society in North Tural who look posed to take over as fresh antagonists at least temporarily; I'm giddy to be right about that. The full-on cyberpunk aesthetic was a surprise. And speculation can go anywhere so I'm trying not to cling to any theory because that leads to disappointment. EW's patch content and the name from Zidane hints at a Shard-connection, but it's not guaranteed. The proto-language could be a Shard clue or it could be, along with that one suspiciously angled building, a hint that Nine's civilization rediscovered and innovated upon Ancient ruins and technology like the Bentos Ondo did. Or everything there is one-hundred-percent native to North Tural and it looks that advanced because they have an overabundance of lightning aether for electricity and ceruleum and they could progress their technology relatively uninterrupted by most Calamities because Hingashi showed back in SB that the Calamities weren't as intense and civilization resetting the further from Eorzea's epicenter you got. Could be the civilization before Tural's Federation formed or not. Could be a play on Eshter, Cocoon, Bevelle, Zanarkand.... If it is Terra, and the story involves Shard soul immigration, it could be Ardbert and Golbez's goal again. Or, maybe in a reversal, it's people in Tural that were trying to fling their souls onto another Shard.

That the next version of Ishgard Restoration isn't a repeat with Garlemald but more exciting and unexpected by involving the cosmos - did not see coming and makes me as someone that plays DoL/H more than combat jobs very hyped.

[MikkoAkure]

And I actually suspect that fixation's gonna lead to people making progressively more incorrect predictions, as we just start pre-emptively complexifying a twist that's probably not gonna be a huge swerve in the first place.

Nothing wrong with a little hyper-fixation and rampant speculation on something we know nothing about and have no context for. If someone overcomplicates things or the end result ends up not being what they were so certain it was in their head, that’s their own problem.

For example, if someone theoretically saw the new green Mogstation glam and they were already SO certain that we were going to get green mage because of the clover and be able to play with DoTs again that their hype went through the roof and they bought it ahead of Fan Fest, that would be their own problem. :’)

[Iscah]

The ruins below Solution Nine remind me of Nabaath Areng.

[Cilia]

Pictomancer, interesting new class. Colorful. (Boo on Yoshi-P for not cosplaying it himself. There's gonna be so many Highlander Hyur / Roegadyn / Hrothgar charas playing it, "nobody wants to see my midriff" is no excuse.)

Anthro cat muscle mommies. Finally, some good [honk]in' food.

Full trailer looks jawsome. Music slaps, as per Soken standards.

Excited to see what's ahead!

[Lyth]

The expansion of the map northward was a surprise. Shaaloani's description as being in 'Central Tural' makes much more sense now, given that we can actually see its position in the updated map, whereas it was obscured by clouds when they announced it in the EU Fan Fest. Heritage Found seems to be the intersection point between the two architectural styles, so I wonder if that tower was the 'Secret' that was blurred out in Shaaloani during the last Fan Fest. That also means that the Ceruleum mining operation probably connects back to S9.

The large waterfall rift in the Stardust Sea is also really interesting. It looks as if the land was cut in half there.

While Archadion probably doesn't refer to Arcadia in the pastoral sense (given that we already have a Locus Amoenus), it might be a reference to the term as a sort of Utopia. I have no reason for this, but I was somehow reminded of Sharon Apple from the S9 concept art. I wonder if we'll go there to find that the place is being governed by an AI or something.

[Cleretic]

Nothing wrong with a little hyper-fixation and rampant speculation on something we know nothing about and have no context for. If someone overcomplicates things or the end result ends up not being what they were so certain it was in their head, that’s their own problem.

For example, if someone theoretically saw the new green Mogstation glam and they were already SO certain that we were going to get green mage because of the clover and be able to play with DoTs again that their hype went through the roof and they bought it ahead of Fan Fest, that would be their own problem. :’)

I get that there's not something wrong with it, but I can tell it's a perfect storm of my least favorite types of speculation:

• Baseless speculation off the barest pieces of evidence we have,
• Endgame speculation when the game hasn't even started,
• And the sort of speculation that people rapidly forget was even speculation in the first place, and mistake for actual evidence.

That last one's the worst one, because while it's easy to see now, someone who comes in a few months down the track might not even know it's just been a wild guess. Hell, I think it's already happening: I see so many people elsewhere speculating about Altima's sigil in the Arcadeon art (which isn't explicitly related but I think everyone's connected those aesthetic dots) and somehow bigging that up, when... uhm, that doesn't actually look like Altima's sigil.

[Nayukhuut]

Speculation is all we have for the next few months, though. They only gave us the barest bits and pieces. It is fun to guess and then see if you are correct. Solution Nine is just more interesting to talk about than a beach vacation with a side plot of political intrigue, or gods help me, taco cat. Dawntrail had been pretty lacklustre in what it had revealed so far, so people just sorta latched on to it. I say let em have their fun.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Speculation is all we have for the next few months, though. They only gave us the barest bits and pieces. It is fun to guess and then see if you are correct. Solution Nine is just more interesting to talk about than a beach vacation with a side plot of political intrigue, or gods help me, taco cat. Dawntrail had been pretty lacklustre in what it had revealed so far, so people just sorta latched on to it. I say let em have their fun.

Yes. Please let me have this one little spark of joy after so much misery. Plus, don't the Mamool Ja pick their leaders through combat? Is it even a political intrigue plot if all we have to do is win a fight?

[Denishia]

I'm building all my cobwebs of speculation and hopes and dreams on a strained royal sibling relationship where Princess W.'s Mamoojal brother is aiming for the throne because he doesn't think all of their nation will accept the buck from tradition, even if personally he thinks she'd make a good ruler, and it's patronizing big brother concern, and the third major contestant is their childhood friend, a catboy from North Tural who was always interested in the 2nd Age cyberpunk ruins (Solution Nine has no deep connection to another Shard, Ancients, or Aliens. Tech just got very advanced and transhumanist before the Second Calamity put a kibosh on that) and he's now possessed or in contact with this ethereal ghost girl from deep in Tural's past. A pop concert happens at some point towards the end.

I'm happy and having fun.

[YianKutku]

My first thought was that there are a lot of places IRL that use the similar name "Arcadia" to hark back to a region of ancient Greece associated with being an idyllic refuge, but that usually carried associations with unspoiled wilderness so I'm not terribly confident I'm barking up the right tree.

I was approaching it from the architectural term for "arcade", meaning "lots of contiguous arches", but from what we see in that concept art there are no (meaningful) arches, so that's probably wrong as well.

I admit I'm kind of reluctant to consider that the meaning might be based on the "gaming machines" meaning of "arcade", because that's a bit too whimsical for me for the eight-man raid.