...with combat instanced areas going down to 8! Here is what is most likely "Multi" party. It was really hard to capture these with the bit rate the stream was going at.

Potentially. But I seem to recall some people coming to a similar conclusion when we got the NGS trailer and saw some funky numbers there.

@Knight-Raime In the initial trailer we saw that there's a limit of 8 players, and the TGS showcase confirmed it that battle areas do have an 8 players limit.

As far as I know they only talked about how 8 players would be in combat areas. I'm glad that they are allowing more run ins with people out on the exploration field this way.