Whats Your Fav Story Line Go

tell us what your favorite story line in the game is and why as well as you can share and fun storys from your FFXI history that may be tied to them if you like.

for me its Cop and Rov for now.

Well they both really hit me hard and CoP i put a lot of time and love in to doing the story back in the capped days and made many many friends with it.

Robel Akbel's story

WotG, followed by SoA.

I still didnt touch TVR. Unfortunelly i disliked the most RoV. And i found okish the rest

Not so much the mission story lines, but the sidequests have gotten some emotion out of me.

During the Aht Urgan days, my teenage years, One questline in Caedarva Mire about a Qiqirn finding out his hume friend passed away really got to me. Not sure if it was for AF armor.

The Midras/Amchuchu questlines in SoA were fun. Thought they were gonna be a chore once I started going for the Midra's Helm but found myself sucked into the storyline.

My favourite storyline probably is (was?) Chains of Promathia.
It was told in a very bad way though, with several confusing parts, others that were completely useless and the quality of their cut-scene direction of course was nowhere close to the point where it got on latter expansions.

Still, despite these flaws the general key points of the story circling around the Zilarts, the races of Vana'diel and the sealed god of Death Promathia who just wanted to die and destroy everything with him. I dunno, it was terribly inspiring and so far away from the typical light-novel cliches I've seen in the following expansions.

ToAU was nice but it feels like the story got cut all of a sudden.
WotG was way too watered down through the years and despite having several super cool aspects the huge amount of retcons doesn't comply very well with my tastes.

SoA story was... cool I guess, I loved many characters, but that too feels like part of it was simply cut down. Not as much as ToAU but still, same feeling.


In the end... I absolutely loved the sense of closure granted by RoV.
Call me stupid but I really actually liked it.
That might be my new favourite.

WoTG, while the playability may not have been there, was one where you definitely watched the cutscenes

Lilisette best waifu.

Quality-wise was the best, I'd say in general even better than SoA (which came later).

If we're talking about content of those cut-scenes though... but then again I guess it falls to personal tastes.
I found a lot of the WotG characters obnoxious (Lilisette, Mayakov...), the "timetravel" thing was handled horribly narratively speaking and the whole plot full of retcons which got as far as to define our world a "variation" from the original one was very light-novelish and unepic.
Then again, a lot of people like light novels, I don't, so that's probably the key point at play here.

Its exceedingly hard for me to split the connected emotions around an expansion from the content and the quality- the experiences I had going through RotZ and CoP, statics that formed naturally from shout groups and would last weeks, high end content or new zones unlocked by work not just cutscenes...I might have enjoyed the storytelling in WotG a ton, but it will never hold a candle to the 3 prior expansions due to those connected emotions.

I plan on taking another character through the game's stories soon'ish because everything I'd played up until my recent return I just skipped through.

My only fair options to date therefore are Rhapsodies, San d'Oria, and Windurst.

The Windurst rank missions and Rhapsodies of Vana'diel were fantastic. I can't wait to give the game's other stories an honest attempt. From what I remember of CoP and ToAU I did like those a lot.

Well... you can clearly see that RotZ and at least a good part of CoP were planned from the beginning.
Everything flows so good, despite the bad translation, low quality cutscenes, confusing narrative points etc.

But... it's because those things were planned before the game's launch. I mean, as true as that is, it's nobody's fault.
They had to create things they didn't plan for because they didn't plan far away in the future enough (can we blame them? No) and of course they tried to create other cool things even if loosely connected with the "original story".

Part of me wishes they handled the things in a more "cohese" way, narratively speaking. Part of me thinks that tryin to keep things apart was probably the best choice honestly.

quite true. I don't expect much, but TVR is so horribly thrown together to just fit in NPCs that have zero connection into one story, and the sloppiness makes it completely unwatchable for me. Definitely the first storyline I've skipped reading 100% of the cutscenes.

WotG and SoA still were at least "FF Stories" in my book. But Rhapsodies felt like total fanservice, and TVR something even beyond that.

I was honestly surprised by more than a few things in TVR, but overall so far is way too watered down with way too many useless things, the tone is a bit too much on the funny side for my tastes and several NPCs are a bit (if not completely) Out of Character.

Other than that I'm curious about the story of the world eater egg and I liked how they tried to connect with so many old chars that were unused in RoV. I think they focused mostly on those, at least at the beginning.



So tl;dr
It's not too bad, but too long winded and comical (so far)

I'll give ya that. Finally digging into the real past of Aht Urghan was a very nice surprise, your use of "watered down" fits perfectly though. I'd add "distracted" to a description^^

Perih Vashai's storyline

And Treasures of Aht Urghan. I know people always had so much to say about ToAU, but honestly, the expansion storyline was pretty good, the site "storyline" quests were pretty bad *** too, and now with Voracious Resurgence I really found it bittersweet that ToAU is part of the story. :)

I dunno, I sorta loved TLoU, was a big jump for them, the first expansion they didn't plan. Such a change of mood, the near east. Taking inspiration from earth's middle east countries. It was beautiful!
They even created new cool beastmen (as much as it felt "strange" they were never even remotely mentioned in all the perfectly puzzle-fitting stories we heard in RotZ and CoP...)
They also involved Odin and Alexander and so many cool things. They created an incredibly fascinating lore, but then allowed us to experience like 1/100th of it, and this sorta left a sour taste on my mouth and likely contributed to that feeling of "rushed ending" that I got at the end.

Also if I may say Naja/Abqubah were the light/funny aspect of the expansion and they did a good job with them but if in my opinion they dragged it a bit too much... seeing the same comical and surreal (sometimes, given the dangerous and world-ending context) scene for the nth time progrssively loses a good part of its "fun inducing" potential, imho.

ToAU built a beautiful world, far beyond what I think most expected when we were told a new continent was coming. There was depth, history, ties to traditional FF lore, and most important to me- they attempted a culture not typically used in RPGs much up to that point.

Maybe that lack of really going full-depth into the world they built there is what frustrates me the most with WotG. In a way, I always viewed Vana'Diel got the OG stories and 2 expansions, and still needed more to really process all we were given. I was hoping for a 2nd Aht Urghan expansion to build upon the reveal, the way CoP built upon legends established prior. Instead, SE built this great, expansive world, and then ran away from it and back to the old standby of Shadow Lord with WotG. Felt lazy.

And they did that in such a convoluted way, with so many retcons, despite the fact that they could've done so much more with exploring the past, the old characters, the old towns that weren't destroyed yet (Tavnazia!).
We got only a bit of it, so much less than they could've done. They preferred to focus on those anime convoluted princess light novelish things rather than the epical past of Vana'diel.

Also the fact that the 3 cities storylines and the main storylines were written by different people, each of whom worked on their own completely, didn't really help the sense of cohesion and further aggravated the "watered down" aspect that many of us suffered while tryin to complete the story through those long, long years.

One thing that i thought very interesting in WotG was that it told the past of the current age.

But im not sure if its just me that missed the point, but i failed to fully grasp the passage between the WotG and the “current” age.

Supposelly both are just one generation apart, but iirc, at the end of WotG, the odds were totally favorable to the side of Shadowlord.

What i didnt comprehend is how the allies made their comeback and won the war.

I still think the timeline as a black box where miraculously the allies won against an entity way stronger than them

Let's solve that with their adored "Odin did it" XD XD XD

Chains of Promathia was the best. For an expansion that added no new jobs, it's story carried it. Those missions were tough. People took pride in having access to sea.

TVR is actually pretty solid. It can have a light comical tone and mystery which we are used to seeing in storylines. I’m sure it’s just going to get darker and the stakes will be raised soon.

It has old school rank mission vibes if you were to compare it to any other storyline except that these missions are actually interesting and hold your attention.

chains

i am going to read all of this soon but i want to hear more

keep going my friend :)

Blue Mage job quests

Going a long way back in time, but I do remember enjoying the serpent general quest line in ToAU. It was neat they added a way to learn about the generals who fought beside you in beseiged.

As much as I actually loved those chained stories on one hand, on the other hand I always found it stupid how people who weren't even from the near east, in a few years became "key" members of the near east, covering very delicate and important positions.
I mean wtf, didn't they have native/locals to assign those roles to?

It never really made much sense to me.