I'm going to put this in spoiler tags in case people don't want to read about the story. I'm going to try to leave out as much detail as I can and keep it somewhat general.
I'm pretty sure the main storyline starting from the beginning of the game begins the story of the 7th Umbral Era. I'm not sure how the quests since 1.18 fit with the scenario since I completed the main story before that patch, so it may be a little disjointed; I couldn't say.
There's a lot of things going on at once. The main focus is the antagonistic Garlean Empire trying to conquer the rest of the Eorzean city-states so they can usher in the 7th Umbral Era. They hope to accomplish this by somehow having the newly turned-red moon Dalamud crash into the earth to bring about a new era. This gives them a somewhat cultist persona despite being so technologically advanced.
There are two main groups trying to oppose this. The first is The Path of the Twelve, which is a group comprised of adventurers who have the power of the Echo which allows them to see visions of the past. This ability is seen used a lot in main story cutscenes and also cutscenes for many of the class quests. (the latter not being TOO impacting on the main story, but does give a lot of background on certain NPCs and events) They also have ties to the Sylphs and were aiming to try to unite with the beastmen tribes to repel the Garlean invasion.
The second faction (the name escapes me at the moment) is made up of a group of people also trying to oppose the Garleans conquering of Eorzea. If you've played through any of each city's storylines, they'll be the first NPC you run into. (The Miqo'te for LL, the Lalafell and Hyur for Gridania, the Hyur Bard for Ul'dah) They seem to be making a lot of moves behind the scenes, such as influencing the leaders of each city-state to reconstruct the Grand Companies. They also have a brief cutscene where they are together in the last story mission. It's yet to be seen what grand scheme they have in the events currently unfolding.
This is pretty much where the story is at this point. The Primals are somehow draining the aether from Eorzea, slowly kill the planet of its life force. This is why we have to battle Ifrit, and probably the same reason why there will be other primal fights. It's speculated that there will be a grand showdown with the Empire before 2.0 arrives.
Edit: Just wanted to clarify, segments in time are separated into Astral (light, peace) and Umbral (dark, chaos). So far there have been 6 Astral and Umbral eras. We're currently in the 7th Astral era, however in light of recent events involving the Garlean Empire, they're trying to bring the world into the 7th Umbral Era. We're not there yet, but we're heading that way.
Edited by user Monday, October 17, 2011 2:34:08 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified