soo are the dragons really the enemy?

Lets see
1. There's a pope leading ishgard and we all know SE hate religious leaders
2. Midgardsomar answers the call (though he's gonna observe for now)
3. Pope looks like their being controled by the asciens
4. Ishgard broke a "covenant" with the dravanian
5. A wyrmlord's call is serious business. No call has been announce in their 1000 year long fight up until now. So the Ishgardians probably did something REALLY bad for that to happen.

I don't think the Dravanians are necessarily bad, but are driven by rancor and vengeance which is not good for them either

Well it is possible everything we know is not what it appears to be.

Ishgard has so far push ideas that Dragons are evil but there are a some gaps between dragons actions I've yet to figure out or find hints to reasons.

However, hints of Ishgard being under the control of Ascians and their corruption of the government has been popping up a while.

There also been some hints that Ishgard has a dark secret since 1.0 with how the Holy See summoned all the men in Falcon's Nest away to a unknown location. A NPC believed it was conscription but all those men are said to ended up killed by Dragons for mysterious reasons but their bodies were never found.

It is possible the Holy See has secretly been fueling Ishgard citizen's hatred for Dragons by making certain amount of people disappear and blaming it on the Dragons so Ishgard can continue to attack the Dragons.

I won't be surprised if the true reason behind the Dragon's constant attacks on Ishgard is because the Holy See continues to secretly send people to attack the dragons to make the Dragons continue to attack Ishgard. Forcing the Dragons to believe as long Ishgard remains they will never stop being attacked by them since the Holy See, under the advisement of Ascians, will just keep sending people to attacking the Dragons until one side is completely wiped out.

All this chaos would fall into the a Ascian Plan to cause more chaos.

My guess for the storyline is we enter Ishgard, find out about the corrupt government, join the Dragoons that are rebelling, then side with the dragons to eventually take out the corrupt government.

There has been a tad much of straw clutching to debase one side over the other for a while now but it is no secret as to where the conscripted men went.

It is highly unlikely there's a conspiracy for Ishgard to slaughter its own manpower in a time of a shortage of manpower, and the Dravanians are not the wounded whiter then white puppies some seem to promote them as.
They do slaughter entire villages with women and children and don't have any consideration to the targets they actually go after. (They attack the adventurers enough.)

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Originally Posted by Celvantis

There has been a tad much of straw clutching to debase one side over the other for a while now but it is no secret as to where the conscripted men went.

It is highly unlikely there's a conspiracy for Ishgard to slaughter its own manpower in a time of a shortage of manpower, and the Dravanians are not the wounded whiter then white puppies some seem to promote them as.
They do slaughter entire villages with women and children and don't have any consideration to the targets they actually go after. (They attack the adventurers enough.)

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Chances are, or at least I hope, that there is no black and white but both sides are a shade of grey.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

There is no difference in what the English and Japanese dialogue communicated. Both referred to the past conflict as a motivator for the ongoing war.

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This is factually inaccurate. In these lines in particular, the English says they are going to war because of the past. In the Japanese, it's because of the past, and, MORE IMPORTANTLY, that that past is now being repeated.

English makes them seem spiteful.

Japanese gives them a legit reason.

I mean, the difference is right there in the lines. Full breakdown in following (spoiler) thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ersus_english/

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

Chances are, or at least I hope, that there is no black and white but both sides are a shade of grey.

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Ya it more likely there are still more info to provide for us.

Right now Midgar isn't controlling the Dragons in Ishgard due to his current state. The one controlling the Dragons in Ishgard currently is Nidhogg the Lord of Dragons.

Hopefully more info about the Dragons are released in 2.5 Part 2 rather than a generic Save Ishgard, Celebrate in Ul'dah, Coup d'etat, and a big TO BE CONTINUED IN 3.0.

The Archbishop in Ishgard is clearly being manipulated by the Ascians, so I believe that we are actually fightin on BEHALF of the Dragons, as opposed to against them.

This also makes sense in that fact that the Au Ra are *SUPPOSEDLY* the offspring of Saint Shiva and dragons. As such, Ishgardians hunted them as abominations, driving them out of Eorzea towards Othard. Now that they've returned with Lady Yugiri, they're probably as eager to fight the Ishgardians, as they are embracing their draconic forebears.

I have little doubt that the religious order of Ishgard will be the primary antagonist right out of the gate. I suspect a couple of dragons are going to get carried away, though, leading to us needing to fight a few of them, too.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

This is factually inaccurate.
...
I mean, the difference is right there in the lines. Full breakdown in following (spoiler) thread:

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Intaki is aware of the Reddit spoiler thread:

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Originally Posted by Intaki

The Japanese version (or rather, the Redditor with an agenda version) simply tries to justify it further by insinuating that because Ishgard did bad things before, it follows that it will do so again.

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He/she believes that it is the result of a biased translation - that the translator wished to portray the dragons in a positive light, and so tailored his or her translation to emphasize this. I do not know if there's any truth to that belief. It would take someone fluent in Japanese to examine that Reddit thread and declare, "Yeah, that's pretty much the best, most straightforward way to translate that." or "Huh, there's some odd translation choices being made here. The author may have an agenda!" I don't know if anyone in this thread, including Intaki, has those qualifications, so it's pointless to argue about it. Intaki thinks liberties were taken, and no one else here can provide any evidence to the contrary since none of us can translate it ourselves.

Anyway, what I'm most curious about is whether the Heavensward expansion Main Scenario quests are going to require completion of the original Main Scenario quests to begin them. One thing that was kind of interesting in FFXI was that each expansion had a completely independent storyline, with the exception of the first expansion (which required completion of the Main Scenario of the base game). You could play the scenario from Wings of the Goddess without ever touching the scenario from. Making expansions independent has a lot going for it - players new to the game purchasing the expansion don't have to worry about catching up on all the previous expansions before they can dig into the new stuff.

Every indication right now is that Heavensward is going to pick right up from the current Main Scenario. It's early in the game's life, so maybe this is feasible now, just as Rise of the Zilart was when it was released for FFXI.

The lack of accuracy of the Reddit translation has been called out by people in other threads who also claim literacy in Japanese, just to add to the above post.