Also wanted to bring up it's very likely that what we've seen so far isn't actually the full trailer as of yet; from what I remember, new expansion trailers usually have a shortened/cut-down trailer showing some teasers, then they release the full trailer showing everything off at a later date. Granted, I have no idea if that's the case here this time around, or when this next potential trailer could potentially be released - a few people have said that there's likely going to be some other fanfest in October(?) that drops the full trailer - but it's possible that we haven't seen everything just yet.
I know full well that this is a teaser trailer and not the full one, but most teasers have some kind of interesting hook to them. Besides Stormblood I think as we only got the Monk duel in the teaser. Look at Shadowbringers, Heavensward, or Endwalker and you'll see the teaser had generally more going on. I want to see where they go as I want to believe they're trying something, but I dunno. I mean it is hard for me to keep genuine interested in something this long, so I applaud them for that.
Still I want to see how FFXIV does "low stakes" because while extremely rough, I did enjoy the low stakes adventure romp of early ARR and just listening to people talk about themselves and their lives while doing do goodery shit. It's neat and to me big epic high stakes stuff is just too dime a dozen, especially in JRPGs. So I'm okay with a more middling threat relative to ShB or 6.0 EW, just current EW is just not it right now.
I will note though that Gridania is actually xenophobic as fuck and especially in early writings you could very much say they're racist. Even if it is for actual reasons and not some "Ala Mhigger skulls are..." tier logic like the white slavers of the southern USA area. If you can read between the lines and see beyond the Tolkien elves you can realize Gridania is actually quite Japanese with the Elementals representing Shinto Kami spirits and the whole "outsider" attitude with how closed off they are/were (especially in 1.0). It is rather clever how Gridania was designed to embody some Japanese cultural values without just making everything Asian as fuck.
Limsa is also heavily shat on sometimes for being like the colonizing Americans/British/Europeans in-general for outright stealing, as according to the lore both background and in the MSQ, their land from the kobolds through brutal war which is why Titan came out. I've even seen people say ARR is heavily written through a colonist lens (which makes it racist) because Garlemald called everyone savages and everyone has problems with the tempered beast tribe people for obvious reasons.
Boy if only ARR had side quest lines you can't fucking miss because they have a unique symbol where we talk to normal beast tribe people who aren't mind controlled and everyone became cool with them by the end of that little story arc, boy if only such things existed.
In the end, only people who are genuinely curious will actually understand this story overall because there's a lot of background information locked behind pretty much books worth of optional text somewhere in this game. You'd need to be very good at putting all the information together which is frankly difficult because it is so scattered in seemingly random places. Did you know that Dragonstar (The original Dravania homeland) was hinted at ever since 2.0 ARR? Me neither until I saw some random fucking Coerthas quest bring it up.
Did you know the Ala Mhigans committed what pretty much everyone would consider a war crime by calling a cease fire and then murdering a famed general of the Gridania military back during a peace meeting while the Ala Mhigan invasion's Autumn War was going on only to then cover it up? That was in the SB Bard quest of all things, and the upright patriotic twin adder general man decided to take that info to his grave because he realized that stuff was a long time ago and none of that shit matters anymore. What a guy, what a racist xenophobic bigot who hates Mhiggers. Gosh FFXIV is really teaching me to hate Mhiggers. Damn racist vidya game.
If you made people actually need to read all this and more to understand everything that lead up to all the events that happen in the MSQ from solely the MSQ, we'd probably have ARR again and no one likes ARR because nothing was "important" enough because all they can remember from ARR is Garleans and a dumb feast, nothing else happened or was said in 2.0 ARR about anyone or anything. Nothing at all. No one learned anything, and it shows.
Gridania gets some of its best work in 2.0 honestly, that one bar in South Shroud is great if you actually read back through that little quest line again. Tl;dr is: Former wood wailer (general?) guy retired and opened a bar where anyone can have a drink, including the poachers without any pushback. Because of this act of general kindness, said poachers help early WoL stop the traitor wood wailer who was selling his country out to Garlemald for money. That's right, the people Gridania hated and hired this militia to stop, would later stop said traitor militia member from conspiring against them to aid their biggest enemy out of greed. The irony was lost on me the first time 10 years ago, but I did it again about 2-3 years ago and I caught it this time.
