8.0 and World

**Thighland** · 07-07-2025 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by ShadowyZero

i hear you about the people excited about Mercydia but i think we know too much about it as is, which is why it confused me when Hades brought it up because like what more is there for us to possibly know that hasn't already been revealed or is common knowledge at this point? how would they translate it all into a compelling narrative thats supposed to span across an entire expansion?
like i tell you what we all know about Mercydia if that will help my argument here but to give you the cliff notes version it boils down too: "people really hated the Allagan Empire so they joined hands with the Dragons to fight them"

We've really seen our fair share of Dragons, Allagans and Voidsent over the years, and it surely wouldn't feel very fresh to base another expansion on it.
I guess the solution to that would be to primarily concentrate on the other aspects of Meracydia, like the peoples behind the Warring Triad. The worshippers of Sophia I find particularly interesting.
Of course there's a bunch of other stuff they could come up with.

**MikkoAkure** · 07-07-2025 11:57 PM

Originally Posted by ShadowyZero

i hear you about the people excited about Mercydia but i think we know too much about it as is, which is why it confused me when Hades brought it up because like what more is there for us to possibly know that hasn't already been revealed or is common knowledge at this point? how would they translate it all into a compelling narrative thats supposed to span across an entire expansion?
like i tell you what we all know about Mercydia if that will help my argument here but to give you the cliff notes version it boils down too: "people really hated the Allagan Empire so they joined hands with the Dragons to fight them"

The devs can concoct any number of reasons that we currently have no context for to get us to Meracydia. This basis for our journey to Tural was mostly just "go on adventure" with a secondary addition of "help random NPC become queen of her nation because she says her brother wants to send an army (despite Tural seemingly having no navy)".

Beyond Late Allagan history there already affecting many stories in the game, Meracydia seems interesting as a setting because it's been dangled in front of us for a long time and seems to be based on Africa (Kple kple mask, ben-ben stone, hippopotamuses, shabti, sphinx, biloko, leucrotta, etc.) with additional Australian animals and geographic location/isolation thrown in for good measure. Neither really shows up often in fantasy so it would be interesting to see what they could work with.

I'm personally not very keen on another shard-hopping story or a time travel/alternate timeline one. We've done shard-hopping stories 3 times now and I don't really trust the writers to make a good story that involves time travel anymore.

Other options include anywhere in Ilsabard, which we've been to the edges of but never really delved into. Freshly independent countries all over the place hot off of their rebellions could be the seeds of a good story, especially since we've had an expansion-long break from anything to do with Garleans. And Ilsabard has more relevance to our characters than far-off Meracydia.

**ShadowyZero** · 07-08-2025 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The devs can concoct any number of reasons that we currently have no context for to get us to Meracydia.

I'm personally not very keen on another shard-hopping story or a time travel/alternate timeline one. We've done shard-hopping stories 3 times now and I don't really trust the writers to make a good story that involves time travel anymore. .

This ia a fair point they writers can and will make up any scenario to get us from point A to point B and yea i can agree that rehashing an repeating story beats wears off an loses its lustre and allure. thats why in my original post i put fourth the idea of us traveling to other stars/planets as a new possibility and i think thats why they are experimenting with the idea via cosmic exploration too see if players have any interest or desire to go beyond Eitherys etc.
with us landing on a new entire planet it gives the devs a lot of room to experiment with a ton of new ideas an to build something unique and slightly more original an can give the design team new fun projects too with making new monster types and alien species not known to us lol
an i ultimately think thats whats needed for us in the game right now is something completely new and i mean sure it could flop nothing is a guarantee to be successful Dawntrail despite its flaws was still a new experience to dive into with a completely new environment for us to see an new indigenous people to meet (not including the vanu vali that is or the moblins) so i could see them turn Meracydia into such too but its just a question of whether it would be enough to entice the audience to stay invested considering how much is already known or has been shown to us. and not leaving people with a "that's it? it just ends like that?" an leaving us with more questions than answers or worse just not even touching upon plot threads at all.

**Carin-Eri** · 07-08-2025 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The devs can concoct any number of reasons that we currently have no context for to get us to Meracydia. This basis for our journey to Tural was mostly just "go on adventure" with a secondary addition of "help random NPC become queen of her nation because she says her brother wants to send an army (despite Tural seemingly having no navy)".

Well, options exist. Tiamat very probably returned there and would be well-placed to report to 'us' (likely via Vrtra) if anything untoward occurred there.

**mallleable** · 07-08-2025 05:38 AM

Originally Posted by Chasingstars

The primary goal of visiting other shards, with Azem's Key, should primarily be to rejoin the warrior of light with the remaining fragments of themself, thereby fully rejoining Azem and in the process reach the power of an ancient. As that is also a dangling plot thread that was introduced to us as far back as shadowbringers. The previous reason we couldn't just go do it is because of the lack of personal means to travel elsewhere with the exception of what G'raha did with the crystal tower.

That sounds terrifying if I have to be honest. That would rob any character who has an Azem soul shard of their autonomy, and turn us in a soul devouring, dimension hopping monster. However, it would be interesting if one of our shards is a villain, and has plans to do just that.

**Layte_Aeon** · 07-08-2025 06:29 AM

I mean... we could be going to Aerslant, the ancestral home of the Roegadyn. It's up north, so opposite direction to Meracydia.

**MikkoAkure** · 07-08-2025 08:51 AM

Originally Posted by mallleable

That sounds terrifying if I have to be honest. That would rob any character who has an Azem soul shard of their autonomy, and turn us in a soul devouring, dimension hopping monster. However, it would be interesting if one of our shards is a villain, and has plans to do just that.

I feel like I saw that movie... Well it would be interesting to get Jet Li to voice in a video game.

**Chasingstars** · 07-08-2025 09:23 AM

Originally Posted by Thighland

It's an interesting idea to see what would happen if we become fully rejoined.
But what if the other Azem-shards don't want to be rejoined with us? They are their own people afterall, with their own lives. They'd need a good reason to give up on their own souls, like Ardbert.
Not to mention that we ourselves don't really have a reason to be rejoined.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Why? Why 'should' that happen? Who would want that, to what end would that be?

The Ascians were the only people who asserted that this was in any way an ideal endgame, and we killed them because of it, because to do so would be murder, to bring back a world that's long dead. Even if we take it as a given that this is what would happen (which is already wrong, the Ancients are essentially a different evolutionary state for different conditions rather than some lost Perfect Form), what does this serve other than to prove right a bunch of dead villains who were asserting it as a form of dehumanization, and to bring back a relic of a world that died to its own sword?

Please, explain to me why I should want this, and why this should be the 'primary goal' of any future journey.

Originally Posted by mallleable

That sounds terrifying if I have to be honest. That would rob any character who has an Azem soul shard of their autonomy, and turn us in a soul devouring, dimension hopping monster. However, it would be interesting if one of our shards is a villain, and has plans to do just that.

And that is the point, explore the subject matter, where maybe there is a person who doesn't want to be rejoined to have their autonomy taken. That is a goldmine for storytelling. Not engaging with that content, by contrast, is just leaving a plot thread dangling for no other reason and could be considered wasted potential in writing. After all, if goes unexplored, then why was it even brought up in the storyline? Sure it tells us we are an incomplete version of Azem, but if we do nothing with that storyline, then I could snip it out of the story and no harm comes to the story. See what I mean?

**Cleretic** · 07-08-2025 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by Chasingstars

And that is the point, explore the subject matter, where maybe there is a person who doesn't want to be rejoined to have their autonomy taken. That is a goldmine for storytelling. Not engaging with that content, by contrast, is just leaving a plot thread dangling for no other reason and could be considered wasted potential in writing. After all, if goes unexplored, then why was it even brought up in the storyline? Sure it tells us we are an incomplete version of Azem, but if we do nothing with that storyline, then I could snip it out of the story and no harm comes to the story. See what I mean?

So your answer is that, because this is the only thing you could possibly imagine them doing with the Azem storyline, this must be what happens, even though nobody can put forward why it would be anything but a terrible idea on both a moral and narrative level.

I'm sorry, no. It would literally be more interesting to abandon the Azem story entirely than to do this.

Originally Posted by ShadowyZero

i hear you about the people excited about Mercydia but i think we know too much about it as is, which is why it confused me when Hades brought it up because like what more is there for us to possibly know that hasn't already been revealed or is common knowledge at this point? how would they translate it all into a compelling narrative thats supposed to span across an entire expansion?

Your entire storyline summary of Meracydia focuses on the dragons, but forgets that it's not a country of dragons. Allow me to summarize it:

-Five thousand years ago, it was host to three unique civilizations outside of the dragons: a centaur-like race that worshipped Zurvan, a rationalist society of multiple races that worshipped Sophia, and a race of tree people that didn't actually seem to worship anything until pushed to the grindstone by the Allagans and forced to summon Sephirot in self-defense.
-Allag failed to conquer it the first time, and had to come back centuries later with supertech to even have a chance
-In the present day, it's reported to be a wasteland... by sailors that can't even make landfall because of hostile locals, so what do they know?
-Thanks to Fandaniel, we did learn there was still a clan of dragons out there, and Tiamat's gone out to meet them. We can reasonably assume that the Warring Triad society's successors likely still exist too, five thousand years removed.
-Other scattered little pieces of info suggest Australian fauna, i.e. kangaroos. There's also some hints of Africa with stuff like the sphinxes in Azys Lla.

Just because you look at this and only think of the dragons, doesn't mean that the dragons are all we've got. Meracydia's actually roughly comparable to what we had of Tural pre-Dawntrail; with Tural we had the Mamool Ja, the Whalaqee, and that's about it, and they went off and made my favorite expansion out of that mystery zone. With Meracydia, we have one dragon, the vague specter of the Warring Triad's societies, and the overall vibe of 'Australia'; that's a hell of a lot of blank space to fill in.

I look at Meracydia and see a hell of a lot of potential for a story: not only do we have Tiamat as an exceptionally odd contact there, but the fact that the locals are so hostile raises interesting questions about how we handle in an adventure there; are the locals so desperate to handle a problem that they ask for outside help despite their own sensibilities, or are they so hostile that we have to prove ourselves to be cool to an entire goddamn Australia? Are they hostile out of general distrust of outsiders, or are they actually trying to protect something? Did Allag get knocked back the first time because Allag just sucked at naval warfare, or did they have a great secret that still lies there? And what about all the cool Australia stuff that's there? We saw Dawntrail make great stuff out of the Yucatan cenotes, the painted hills, and even a Texan desert, let's see what they can do with stuff like Uluru, or the Great Barrier Reef!

Also, forgive me, but I wanna see one of my favorite games do their version of my home country. I wanna see Meracydia in the same way I wanna see Pokemon do an Australian region, and I'm a lot more interested in that than 'let's go to the Fourth to commit cannibalism'.

**mallleable** · 07-08-2025 11:53 AM

If Dawntrail is the 'vacation' expansion, then Meracydia could be the 'road trip' expansion, a Fury Road trip. They did give us Mad Max gear after all.

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