So, I checked the fan fest schedule, and everything vital is pressed into the opening presentation which I watched in full. Let’s discuss then!
My personal highlight is, of course, the new combat job – Pictomancer. As you probably know, I’m a sucker for casters, and it’s definitely something I will wait for, drooling, in Summer. It’s a classic job from FFVI, as far as I gathered. And yes, in FFXIV it’s Krile :)
Pictomancers fight with… painting animated pictures and splashing paints (that is, concentrating aether for this etc) which looks spectacular. I have a couple of concerns – one, is those constant “plop” sounds, two, we’ll have to see how landscape painting moves (yes) would block the view – that could be a problem, especially during boss encounters. Otherwise, it looks very-very promising. Just look at that:
I even think that maybe I would play through MSQ on new jobs – miqo’te as my canonical WoL may walkthrough as Viper, and lalafell as Pictomancer. I’m quite excited about both – unlike Endwalker’s Sage or Reaper, which turned out to be fun jobs, but I wasn’t hyped at all upon their announcement.
The next thing I was excited about were the new hi-tech zones. Dawntrail in general is “America”-inspired expansion (as in Central and South ones), but apart from “aztec” temples and other zandalar vibes, it also has revealed a neon-robotic zone, which will be no less than our new city hub and 8-ppl raid scene:
Yes, please!
Not really excited about female Hrothgar and Hrothgar in general – to my taste, FFXIV has enough furry races to begin with (and I mean, cat persons when we already have miqo’te? It’s like “pick a neko degree to your taste”). Yet I’m glad they filled this gap in character creation screen, and they look great.
The new mode aka Cosmic Exploration is something I’m wary about. New gameplay modes didn’t stick with me – namely, the Island Sanctuary and Variant Dungeons, but surely people do enjoy them, and the more options we have the better. Someday, maybe?
Speaking of modes, there are Field Operations coming. It’s about to be content like Bozja and Eureka. I haven’t played and/or tried both, because it’s kinda outdated content for relic weapons, so I’m eager to try the fresh one.
And I appreciated graphics updates a lot. It’s not THAT drastic like we had in Draenor in WoW, but the quality of lighting and character/NPC models improved a lot. Now, a lot more realistic and a lot less like plastic dolls. I was especially impressed by highlander Huyr (humans) and Roegadyn.
Well, that would be the most important highlights of the presentation for me! Let’s say I’m quite hyped.
Gnomecore 