External sound cards have the advantage of less electrical interference, but usually the internal ones have external power not coming from the PCIe slot so it isn't a big problem. Asus left the market leaving you with good old Creative Sound Blaster again. Choose whatever your budget allows, the two upper tier ones just differ in accessories, but that might have changed. And AV receivers the same, I am not the up to date audio guy what is a good deal. Just try to stay >120 dB SNR on sound cards for high end.

Don't search for computer speakers, just look for normal speakers on which I can't help out too much on. Unless you want to invest into an expensive sound card, you probably should go for an AV-Receiver which transmits the audio through HDMI as this will give you the maximum quality depending on the supported formats. I have a sound card -> old school amplifier -> speaker setup. Basically it is your choice where the digital to analogue transformation happens, whether through a receiver or sound card. A sound card does have the massive advantage of providing virtual headphone surround sound (yes on stereo headphones, and no, this is really working) which receivers typically don't have, because reasons and it will provide you with a massive immersion boost. And no onboard sound is not comparable, even the best one is a clear step down.

This looks like I-No from Guilty Gear (Fighting Game).

FC are just social groups, not raid content. For that you should recruit statics or communities which organize old synchronized content.

Staring blankly into space. Actually meet some friends I haven't seen since Endwalker release maintenance. /s

FFXIV has quite literally a Fellowship and Community Finder to look for groups which have similar interests as you. Be it Mahjongg, Role-Playing, Try-Harding old content or seeing for LGBTQ interactions. And the rest is done over Discord, because that is for sure a better communication tool than whatever the game devs can come up with. Even the content thing is not true. There is seperate content which absolutely requires cooperation, schedules outside the cookie cutter main content like Bozja and Deep/Criterion Dungeons. More similar to old school MMOs. I'm fine with a diverse array of content.

I am so excited about all the visual changes, as the vistas are beautiful but low detail render distance of shadows makes look so many beautiful areas very dull.

Otherwise I hope for more varied and engaging combat mechanics in casual content without upping the difficulty necessarily. Otherwise a standard expansion it seems, but I wonder if there will be more unique solo experiences like Endwalker provided with the stealth missions.

You should still buy sound cards as they are significantly better, at least the ones in the 100€ range. Just because there are premium mainboards with acceptable sound doesn't mean it is great.

At least something.