For stormblood do you want the gated conten path of hw, or the free roam path of arr?

[Chalbee]

Lore-wise, a lot of magic was deemed forbidden, thanks to calamities and magic's misuses that brought them on. Even non- magical classes, like dark knight, were mercilessly hunted down for story's own purpose. (The first dark knight slayed a member of the church to defend the innocent; considering Ishgard was originally a member of the Eorzean Alliance, the city-states would be more inclined to listen to the Holy See than a seemingly murderous knight).

With regards to the extra jobs (snip for length) The jobs being locked behind the expansion is frustrating, I agree. But I can see why from a lore-standpoint. And yes, there is probably a money-making standpoint behind gating them as well. For 4.0, if they could not tie in the additional jobs with the story behind Ala Mhigo, or have them make reference to 3.x events, it would make sense for them to be completely ungated. But SE has already set a precedent here, and they tend to stick to their current formulas.

The point I’m trying to make, though is that these are all conscious decisions. For example, they didn’t have to make Dark Knights fill the lore role that they do, they could have plopped them in Gridania and said they practice some ancient Gelmorran swordcraft or whatever. On account of the whole game being a work of fiction, there is nothing a priori that says jobs have to tie into the lore of an expansion area. SE decided that Dark Knights are an Ishgard thing, but they aren’t an Ishgard thing by default.

While we can’t be undo that decision for HW’s jobs, any new jobs in 4.0. don’t have to follow the same path. The devs write the lore for the jobs just as much as they write the lore for the MSQ, so they are more than capable of writing MSQ-independent lore for new jobs.