I know the devs like to see player feedback in response to announcements and changes so I thought I'd compile my thoughts here

Context on me: lifelong Final Fantasy fan, I played a little bit of XIV 1.0 and 2.0 but didn't start consistently playing until Shadowbringers dropped. Mostly a casual player, I almost never savage raid, but I've completed a few long form grinds such as Eureka, Blue Mage, Jack of All Cards, etc. I enjoy personal aesthetic and character expression so dressing my Bluest Boy in glams I like is the most fun. When the Glamour Unlock dropped in Patch 7.4 I spent about 12 hours in my glamour dresser re-doing my glams before I touched the new MSQ or any other new content, lol

OK, here's my thoughts on stuff so far.

- Happy to see that the Free Trial and its associated meme will include Shadowbringers, as expected.

- I don't ultimate raid so no thoughts on Dancing Mad Ultimate, but happy for those pursuing it. I hope it'll at least be a fun spectacle to watch a clear vod of. I expect the Warring Triad will be phases of that fight and I'm looking forward to seeing what wacky new monstrosity the final phase will be.

- Beastmaster coming in September. Sucks to wait but it makes sense to put that at the biggest gap between updates. While people are waiting for Evercold we can all be Beastmastering. On one hand, seeing Beastmaster re-use Paladin animations feels uninspired, but if they make up for this by letting us glam Paladin shields onto Beastmaster, the same way Summoner and Scholar can glam each other's books, I will accept that.

- new expansion of Evercold. Neat title. I live in Canada so this feels on brand for me lol

- MSQ: I'm so happy we're going to the Fourth shard. Even though we haven't finished exploring Etheirys yet (where's Corvos and Meracydia?!) I'm very happy that we're going shard-hopping again. It gets first introduced as a world ruined by ice but many of the areas they showed were not iced over which is curious and I feel like is probably part of the storyline. The joke I made while co-streaming was "we are still developing the ice" lol. Having WoL's job for this expac be Reaper is intriguing and I'm curious about the reason.

- I'm kinda sad we aren't getting the rumored skill points system instead of increasing the level cap but what can ya do.

- Evangelion: Ghost of Desire alliance raids. I haven't watched Eva so I can't say I'm excited in the same way others are, but I'm instead choosing to focus on the non-zero probability that we the WoL will get to pilot a giant mech and fight a kaiju. I miss the Sapphire Weapon fight lol. Even better if we get our own EVA unit, maybe? The question is, are we getting isekai'd to Japan, or will these giants be stomping through Etheirys? Maybe both? Excited to find out.