I am once again wondering what the hell is the final zone. We have had that happen two expansions in a row and I am SO excited to find out. Edit: I level literally everything but I'm doing Dawntrail as Paladin first, so I get it. Spoiler talk below: Also, my crackpot theory is that the City of Gold (Solution 9, it looks like) is most likely actually from one of the rejoined shards. The lightning one, specifically. Somehow they created a failsafe to save their selves and have resurfaced in the current world and have decided to take over aggressively to replace the people who are there with their own. Specifically: the robot soldiers are being remotely puppeted by souls inside of a "computer" system (we've seen a sign written in readable text that says "soul storage" somewhere...) being what Solution 9 likely *is.* They have no bodies except robots to pilot from within, so it becomes an invasion to replace the people with their own kind... the source of this crackpot theory: the mentions of how the inspiration was taken from FF9, combined with how travel between the shards works. You can't bring your body, only your soul. Why else would they all be androids?
Slight spoilers, I think. At the mention of "the cult of light" during the trailer, it makes me think it could be a group similar to the Ascians, but aligned with Hydaelyn instead of Zodiark, despite both no longer existing. I doubt they'll go the alien invasion route myself, as they already have covered aliens quite a few times, especially with Endwalker, I'm still curious what made SE decide to go with the "dragons are aliens" route.
The thing that caught my attention the most was the fact that they're showing us, at least what we think is, the city of gold. In famous ffxiv fashion, we never see the final zone before we get to it in game. So if we're seeing part of the city in the launch trailer, what in gods name are we gonna see beyond that gate?
