Sagacyte's BG corner

We will take a break from our regular Music Friday to talk about the biggest news of the day: Final Fantasy XIV has revealed some details about the next expansion coming in early summer 2017: Stormblood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAobb8_SzHY

Stormblood will see us take the fight to the Empire by helping the Resistance in taking back the city-state of Ala Mhigo, under Garlean rule for years. The events that lead us to this started in the latest live patch (3.4, Soul Surrender) but will still be further explained in the next one (3.5). There's little we know of the lore happening in these new lands, but we do know that we'll get new jobs, new zones, new enemies and some system changes.

While no new jobs were formally introduced, FanFest attendees had a tease in the form of the t-shirt Yoshida was wearing (a similar thing happened in the previous 2014 FanFest). Wearing a Scarlet Witch t-shirt pretty much guarantees that we will get Red Mage as one of the new jobs - a long awaited job.

As for zones, we'll go around Ala Mhigo, likely Gyr Abania. The new hub town, which is said to be the place where the trailer takes place, is called Rhalgr's Reach. A "new kind" of exploratory mission will take place in "Eureka", a name that should be familiar to Final Fantasy fans. Speaking of which, there were quite a few mentions that future areas and raids (both 8man and 24man) would be "very Final Fantasy".

We also got a glimpse at one of the main villains of the expansion: Zenos Yae Galvus, commander of the XIIth Legion of the Garlean Empire, currently in charge of Ala Mhigo. His motivations are an important part of the expansion so there's a lot of mystery regarding him.

Speaking of mysteries: who is the young red monk parrying with the Derplander in the intro? Their fight is more a parrying session than a battle, and they seem to know each other very well. Blonde... with blue eyes... related to Ala Mhigo? Hmmmm... I wonder who could she be? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm Could we know her from before... perhaps with a different attire? "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" indeed...

On the systems side, an increase in inventory space was revealed, as well as new minimum requirements for the Windows versions. One of the most cheered announcements was the drop of support for the PS3 version of the game - for the longest time people have speculated that some limitations of the game come from having to support the fading console, and letting it go could open the doors to new visual and technical things. One such thing was mentioned in a new lightning model.

Upcoming FanFests (in Japan and Europe) will bring further reveals and more info, but the stage is set. Ala Mhigo will be the theater where the adventures of the Warrior (Monk?) of Light will take place. Let's look forward to it.

Monk on.
- Sagacyte