pocketfluffal2134: I don't know why they tried selling it as something to be excited for. Its to ease congestion

ImBoredToo: IT'S SO NEW

3 PATHS INSTEAD OF 2

fugnuggets9316: I hope area B, C, D doesn't come off feeling like filler before the actual story start

AoiMabi: I think they are doing this to prevent bottlenecks from interacting from npcs that gatekeep you from progressing... kinda like the whole Raubahn (Savage) thing that happened in stormblood.

datakrasher: WoW experimented with this, it's to ease zone congestion by splitting people up. But they realized it's terrible for story cohesion and nowadays they make the first time you level through the story linear, and when leveling alts you can choose whatever order you want.

thequam64: We had this in Legion (WoW) the goal there was to split the playerbase across different maps so not everyone is stuck on one and people have less lag. So I'm curious about how and why FF does this.

Fuhzix: Its the most annoying way to tell a story because nothing can tie into anything. Each zone will have to be its own little terrarium with nothing significant happening in them. Then you go back to the hub where the story will move forward.

HeartabyssKoi: I was literally sitting there talking to my friends like “Is this not how they already structure the first part of their msq?”

Maybe it’s different guys who knows…

OPxKaLibur: for a guy who skips the story he sure is talking alot

MythSamael: Just spoke about this but no , as an msq andy i dont want this, its like knowing the pre season finale of a show before you watch the show.

XMegaJuni: It’s def not something to bring up during a fan fest. There’s very little value add to the player. They are selling the pathing rather than content

shiryushini7321: Well, they've done that in the last 3 expansions already: In Shadowbringers, you have a choice between going to either Alphinaud or Alisaie first, in ENdwalker, you can either start in Thavnair or Labyrinthos, and in Dawntrail you can either go to the Pelu Pelu first, or the Vanu Vanu (I don't remember their actual Tural name), only difference here is that there'd be 3 zones instead of 2

SupremeCaptainHWD: The fact they're saying nothing is going to happen is a spoiler in itself. It just sounds like the MSQ is going to be tedious busywork with no sense of progression.

MrFrexys: It’s fine and is not that deep. It does not deserve this much analysis holy lmao

sneaky7615: 3:00 I agree but also not that concern? I feel like we can have impactful story without having our entire cast being present.

GaussTheory: Looks like overcompensation for an expansion that didn't deliver

iyoskye: we have done this on every expansion since shadowbringers, originally it was 2 but it followed that up by the story taking a singular path after the 2 now its 3 and they did say that you are going to sync towards the number, which begs the question of what will the daily grind will look like in ec?

OfLaSoul: As an owner of hair, I want to ask all bald players like XENO and NL, why are you BALD?

LethargicHades: I feel like the three branch path is a way for them to test the auto content balancing system. So instead of our player sync to the content, the content is synced to us.

Direwolf13PS3: I believe the core idea is to eventually phase out level syncing as it currently works.

This may or may not work for it.

ragos0587: Its something new so im all for it. I dont mind having 3 sub plots converge into the main plot.

ansurarks: It's picking a starting city in ARR, eventually they all converge.

xderrodecki8905: the big thing here is you would normally have to finish both zones before doing the dungeon the diffrence they are trying to say is there is a dungeon in each zone. which agreeing with yout point its going to be synced anyway but still

exiaedges: Before it used to be two different questline and they merge back into one before the first dungeon. I believe now it is three questline and they have their own dungeon for each of them and the levels of the dungeon are adjusted closer to players’ level which I believe it is three different level options like (101, 103, 105). Once three questline are completed which is around the midpoint of the MSQ, they go back to being linear. As for trials, usually the first trial is around the first third level (53, 63, 73, etc), as it is not confirmed yet, but they might move the first one to after the three questline are completed like they did in Shadowbringers with the second trial.

Fuuugi: one day baldo will use a different thumbnail face xffing

GameoftheWeak: I talked about this a little bit as well in a keynote summary video - It just seems like Raubahn completely broke their early game expansion mindset from every expansion afterwards. The only difference from what they've already done is now the dungeon that occurs in that zone can now be done at any level rather than at set 101, 103, 105 etc intervals. They did this in WoW over 10 years ago in Legion, except the dungeons still had level requirements. My biggest question is whether or not this questing style will only happen once or multiple times throughout the expansion... because if this is a one trick pony this didn't even really need to be explained at all... It's likely all 3 areas will be secular isolated stories that will wrap up in a nice little bow before you move on to the next zone.

DSASHOOT: the only thing I can see this being useful for is day 1 server load balancing people into 3 zones worth of instances

Aug 12 2026

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