We’ve gone through a lot of different names for what are now being called Allied Societies in Final Fantasy XIV, but I think this one finally captures both what the idea is for these quests and the space that FFXIV has narratively staked out for these quests. It was one thing when it was Amalj’aa or Kobolds, groups that at the time were otherwise only antagonistic in their interaction with players, but these days… yeah. Of all the non-player-race groups in Tural, there are only two with a significant hostile presence, and neither the Yok Huy nor the Mamool Ja are exactly uncommon as allied individuals either. They’re kind of a big deal!
That having been said, we still are going to presumably get our three allied societies over the course of the expansion’s lifespan, and those three societies are likely going to exist within the expansion zones. So where could players wind up signing on and helping out? Certainly I was within the general group speculating about what our crafting and gathering allies would be before the expansion launched, but now that it’s out… what are we looking at for reasonable societies?
Before I go into that, I want to note a couple of things. First of all, my assumption here is that as in prior expansions, we will be getting three societies: one for gathering, one for crafting, and one for combat. Moreover, those three societies will be located within three of the new expansion zones. There is, in fact, nothing to make this a law; we could easily get a new Gigas line in Mor Dhona. But this is the way to bet, so it’s where I’m going. Similarly, my assumption is that the last zone of the expansion will not contain one, being as… well, that zone contains no society. Especially now. That’s kind of the point.
So what can we even hope to get? Well, there are a lot of options. But I think they are broadly predictable, and so I’ll start going down the list.
Yok Huy: For a race based on a Final Fantasy XI group I routinely forget exists, I actually sort of love the Yok Huy. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on with these giants, and uniquely among all of these groups, the Yok Huy actually have enemies based on them in Urqopacha. Indeed, they’re perfectly set up for our combat society. The zone-wide quests even imply that there’s more to come with them; they’ve got enemies right there, so we can do a lot with this particular group. And in the wake of the MSQ, they definitely need a new purpose.
Mamook: The center of Mamool Ja society is seeing some changes post-MSQ, and this seems to be the perfect place for gathering quests to wind up, or potentially even crafting quests… although if we get a rebellious group here, combat quests could work as well. It honestly seems that when you’ve had the Mamool Ja around for so long and never had them taking center stage, now is absolutely the time when they’d get to shine, even if I think the odds are pretty good that they’re also involved with Beastmaster. (I mean, the Doppro are right there.)
Ceruleum Miners: This would be really unusual. We haven’t ever had an Allied Society line that centered around a group of pretty normal hyuran NPCs, and on the face of it that would seem to be kind of ridiculous. However, the quests in this zone really do establish a problem but then just hint that it’ll probably get solved in the future, and the fact of the matter is that changing the name specifically to be Allied Societies really does empower these sorts of changes. I’d be a little surprised, but not massively.
Shaaloani Traditionalists: We see very little of the Hhetsarro, the traditional Tonawawta village, the whispers of the Whalaqee. There are a lot of very traditional groups that are spread throughout Tural but are just hinted at, and while I don’t expect to get a full Whalaqee settlement (not yet, anyway), I do think there’s a lot of space to go into this if the developers want to. Whether or not they do want to is a different discussion.
Alexandria: So Alexandria right now is an absolute mess. It still has a lot of messiness from the past 30 years, but now they have a new king who is almost just a ward of another nation, their entire way of life has been upended, and there has to be a lot of questioning of whether Alexandria is still its own nation or a subject of Tuliyollal or what. Oh, and there’s going to start being a flow of people to and from the region beyond the dome. In fact, I’d say the main reason I don’t think this one might be an Allied Society is just because it seems pretty likely we’ll get this one as a major focus of patch storylines.
Moblins: Before the expansion, it was easy to imagine that these would end up being our gathering society, and I sure did assume that. However, having met them in-game now, I just don’t think there’s much more meat there. Indeed, Moblins don’t really add a whole lot, and their structure doesn’t seem to really support being an allied crafting society. If anything, I think they’re going to find a bigger role in the upcoming alliance raid series, not in sidequests.
Hanuhanu: So if you do all of the sidequests including the two big marquee ones in Kozama’uka, the Hanuhanu wind up with a new crafting area in Ok’Hanu. That seems like a big deal! Might be relevant! But it might also not, and I suspect it’s hard to do much with the Hanuhanu that hasn’t been done in the main quest line as well as the Vanu Vanu quests. Still, that does feel like it might be a thread for later.
Pelupelu: Last and, in this case, least, the Pelupelu were definitely the group I expected to be comically incompetent and exhausting ahead of time, but instead they’re low on my list because it just doesn’t seem as if the Pelupelu really have anything to do for an allied society quest. They’re just happily doing their negotiating, they get a fun section during the MSQ, and they come up consistently afterwards. If I had to guess, I’d say we might wind up doing some custom deliveries to them in the future. At most, they might tie in with the Yok Huy. But hey, maybe they’ll be our crafting society after all.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to speculate a bit about Beastmaster, even though we have yet to hear much about it. What will its role be? What might it feel like? And perhaps most importantly, how can it tie into the references of this particular expansion or otherwise enlarge that field?
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
