Quote Originally Posted by Magnesium02 View Post
May contain spoilers.


In the beta last week I ran through the story quest to about r20. You start as a fresh faced adventurer entering the big city for the first time. You attain fame for noble acts and gain recognition from the free company leaders as well as the circle of twelve. You receve flashbacks to previous events (now the 1.0 calamaity), have the matter of the 1.0 adventurers being wiped from common memory and now the mysterious forgotten Warriors of Light, and are introduced to the bad guy. Then you are uncovered to have the gift of the echo.

For the most part it follows the same pattern as 1.0. However I felt a strange discord when going through the story. After thinking about it I realised that it was because I am a 1.0 player I am technically one of the forgotten WoL. The storyline I was following would be the storyline that anyone new to the game would be following. It teaches them about the history of Eorzea and sets up their own personal adventure.

This got me thinking about the storyline as returning 1.0 characters would see it. We are supposed to have returned from statis, yet we would seem to be fresh faced adventurers with no previous history in our world. At some point I assume the storyline should recognise that the 1.0 characters have returned and the NPCs would have their memories about us restored, but oviously this wouldn't work for players who are brand new to the game. So will a part of our 1.0 character setup have some kind of flag that will trigger separate storylines for parts of the story where it would be different for 1.0 and new characters?

I am not trying to make a "let Legacy get extra special stuff" thread, I am just confused as to how the storyline can fit for new and 1.0 characters. Do you think we will have separate storylines? Do you think we should have separate storylines? Or do you think the one storyline will work for both kinds of players?
What Louisoix may literally have done is transported us away with the use of aether. Think of it this way, memories are aether, the power of the Echo is given to us by Hydaelyn and we're able to view this aether in the form of the Echo and we see the past. If Louisoix sent us away and somehow all aether is connected..this missing aether (us) is why the people who remember us have a hazy remembrance of us. They know who we were and remember us...but not entirely, everything is cloudy because our aether in the flow is gone. With our triumphant return I believe everyone will be able to go "OOOH YEAH" as they recognize our faces and features.

As for the story lines. 1.0 characters period will have a different story line than new/fresh adventurers. We are the Warriors of Light and will be returning, probably returning literally to the exact spot we were teleported away from. Whether this is Cartaneau Flats or an area near we don't know yet. NPCs will interact with us differently and the story line up until a certain point will be different. New players shouldn't view this as a bad thing, because they will be given major summaries of what they missed and what the Echo is and who everyone is. As for us, we know who they are (mostly, I can see how someone who left early in 1.0 wouldn't know the NPCs) and they know us. So we will be treated differently.

So ACTUALLY to experience the difference you'd have to have your 1.0 character and a new character to see the differences and how the story line is different. But for new players I'm sure SE has made it so they aren't completely left out, meaning they won't be missing the story line that we will have since they aren't a 1.0 character. I believe most of the story line for us will be refreshing what happened when we were ported away..essentially what happened in the rest of the CS..which EVERYONE will be able to see at Launch and should be amazing as SE stated the End of an Era CS is only halfway of what it will be. So while we get summaries and explanations of this, new characters will be running quests and meeting the Circle of Knowing Archons and the major NPCs of the city-state that they chose..the story of the Grand Companies and the Eorzean Alliance. So in actuality new players will probably experience more story, while we receive refreshments.