How is this thread bait? It's not even an uncommon belief that EW had a lot of dead periods. The entire segment in Labyrinthos being a huge one. Felt like they sacrificed pacing for making sure we didn't finish too quickly.
This was one of the reasons I never liked Stormblood. The MSQ became almost predictable where every odd patch was weirdly for politics of the nations and every even patch had some really crazy action stuff going on. I was so bored hearing about politics of Ala Mhigo and Doma...
they could also be beings of power who came from another world. One of the worlds that meteion visited had 'auspices of power' who ruled over the world, but destroyed it in a fit of rage. Perhaps the remnants of that civilization came to Etheirys and were permitted to stay with the condition that they not meddle in the affairs of the mortal races.
I honestly like the fact that they look into logistics and politics involved with the different nations and acknowledge that, no, you can't just instantly bounce back from something like being occupied by a hostile country or experiencing an apocalyptic disaster.
Though I also disliked sections like Labyrinthos part 2 and a lot of Mare Lamentorum that really just felt like they wanted to drag things out for some reason.