Quote Originally Posted by Cilia View Post
Most likely reason: Ishgard is an expansion area, and they don't want to lock ARR only players or newbies out from experiencing it.

The same thing happens with every holiday event.
This is probably the real reason - you only have to look to FFXI and see the same thing occurred there - none of FFXI's expansion pack cities like Aht Urhgan Whitegate or Kazham ever had special event decorations or npcs either, it was always just either the three starting cities or Jeuno (especially the later for the Starlight event - Jeuno would be the only city to get a special Christmas-themed remix of it's BGM and the other three cities had decorations and featured the special event npcs). SE are simply following tradition here in FFXIV.

Also, given Ishgard is still in ruins from the Dragonsong War, I think they have more pressing matters to attend to than putting decorations up.