I'm not exactly looking forward to the patch quests for Dawntrail... (Spoilers)

[Cleretic]

The thing I'm noticing is that you're immediately parking all your speculation in Alexandria exclusively. And I don't think that's as much of a given as you seem to; remember that Endwalker's patch MSQ basically left everything that wasn't Thavnair, Garlemald and Sharlayan alone (and Sharlayan basically just got footnotes).

What I suspect is that the patch MSQs will mostly be focused on Tural (with probably a bit of Alexandrian stuff but maybe more on the 'what does international relations between these two nations look like' angle), and the exploration of Alexandria as a society might be mostly left to the Arcadion. Sure, the Arcadion is basically the WWE as far as we've been made aware, but normal raids always take giant weird swerves, I wouldn't be surprised to get a helping of Alexandrian politics in there, and that window would be basically entirely on their terms.

[Luzzu]

The thing I'm noticing is that you're immediately parking all your speculation in Alexandria exclusively. And I don't think that's as much of a given as you seem to; remember that Endwalker's patch MSQ basically left everything that wasn't Thavnair, Garlemald and Sharlayan alone (and Sharlayan basically just got footnotes).

What I suspect is that the patch MSQs will mostly be focused on Tural (with probably a bit of Alexandrian stuff but maybe more on the 'what does international relations between these two nations look like' angle), and the exploration of Alexandria as a society might be mostly left to the Arcadion. Sure, the Arcadion is basically the WWE as far as we've been made aware, but normal raids always take giant weird swerves, I wouldn't be surprised to get a helping of Alexandrian politics in there, and that window would be basically entirely on their terms.

I agree with this. It was made pretty clear that Yok Tural and Xak Tural both had substantially more locations to see and given what is shown in both Skydeep Cenote and Tender Valley, I'd say we should be paying close attention to unexplored locations in Tural as well as turning our attention to the south sea isles. I suspect the Arcadion will be our lens into Alexandria's past and future, with potential hints about Sphene's crown and Preservation that tie in to later MSQ.

The process by which the regulators work is painted in such a way that makes it seem unnatural and even abhorrent - this is likely intentional. We're seeing a lot of varying ways of soul tampering and disruptions to the flow of aether and to the Lifestream. There are too many pieces of dialogue suggesting that something is disturbing the greater flow. This is the impression I get and where I would guess the story will go. It would be odd to bring up all these different story beats and not show how they begin this next saga of the game's story.