Revelations from JP Fan Fest (January 2024)

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Ooooor.... Maybe it's just that it's new to us as of this FanFest and looks really really cool and unlike anything we've seen before, brain found connection and made the happy chemicals, and my neurodivergent mind loves looking for meaning in the funny letters :P

Plus, if there are any mysteries in the political Mamool Ja stuff, we don't have enough to speculate about it. What a cyberpunk city is doing in the middle of the Old West invites immediate theorycrafting.

[Cleretic]

Ooooor.... Maybe it's just that it's new to us as of this FanFest and looks really really cool and unlike anything we've seen before, brain found connection and made the happy chemicals, and my neurodivergent mind loves looking for meaning in the funny letters :P

I know it feels a little bit rude and stick-in-the-mud, but honestly, I feel like I can see the next half a year laid out in front of me in just people's responses to that particular thing, because I don't see this as just being a 'fresh new thing' sort of speculation that'll quiet down in a week or two. I think people are gonna fixate HARD on this one.

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.

[YianKutku]

We've done this before, all our predictions about Endwalker were totally broken because we bigged up the moon too much. Granted, that was fairly understandable as a mistake.

Not necessarily. I'm approaching this as Solution Nine being like Elpis, in terms of story revelations, although its status as a player hub would probably mean it will feature early on (so maybe the second half of Labyrinthos).

And Elpis was a major story revelation, which still does not change the impact of the bigger story revelation of Ultima Thule.

I don't think this is a case of Gohn in ShB, where there was the big fiery devastation and Urianger calling Y'shtola "Master Matoya", and it turned out to just be backstory. I think it is going to have interesting lore discoveries, even if its presence here being revealed during Fanfest means it's not going to be the biggest twist.

[Carin-Eri]

New content aside, Soken has done it again - the full version of the trailer music is superb! Love it!

[Nayukhuut]

I am excited for Solution Nine. I have heard lots of theories about what it could be, but given as to the hints in the name, the signs, and the vaguely Ascian looking symbol in the raid that looks to be associated with it, I am intrigued. I have heard everything from survivors of a Shard, to something to do with Azem, to something to do with something Terra like (from FF9), but it is finally something that actually makes me want to play Dawntrail to find out.

The whole beach vacation/political intrigue plot doesn't interest me in the slightest, though.

Can't say I love the look of the new classes either.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I am excited for Solution Nine. I have heard lots of theories about what it could be, but given as to the hints in the name, the signs, and the vaguely Ascian looking symbol in the raid that looks to be associated with it, I am intrigued. I have heard everything from survivors of a Shard, to something to do with Azem, to something to do with something Terra like (from FF9), but it is finally something that actually makes me want to play Dawntrail to find out.

The whole beach vacation/political intrigue plot doesn't interest me in the slightest, though.

Can't say I love the look of the new classes either.

Yeah, who these people are and what they are doing here is the first thing about the expansion that has piqued my interest, too. Before that I was just biting my nails, hoping we don't go there and do anything evil.

While I'm gonna level both up because I level everything up, I'm not really excited about either. I'm more excited about Pictomancer than Viper which is silly of me given Black Mage is my least favorite job, so if it plays similar, those 20 levels will be torture.

And to all those who end up in roulettes with me as I level of jobs I have no interest in, let me apologize in advance. Guess I'll be doing something evil in Dawntrail regardless, huh?

[Bonoki]

Solution 9 is the name of one of Zidane's trance attacks from FF9 which Viper is indirectly based on. My guess is Solution 9, Aliens, Tera. Its a reach but I ain't got nothing else.

[YianKutku]

A bit of random trivia about "Arcadion": the Japanese subtitle is "至天の座", which I would roughly translate to "heavenly seat", or possibly "the seat of (going to) heaven".

Does anyone have any insight on the source of the name "Arcadion"?

[Anonymoose]

Does anyone have any insight on the source of the name "Arcadion"?

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.