If they do gender lock Viera, there will be a backlash of some kind. While its not going to make FFXIV buckle, I do think it will leave a bit of a dent in the game. Gender locked races are, from what Ive ever observed in MMOs, not all that popular a concept with very specific exceptions. I think if they genderlocked Viera, people would be upset enough over it, and you might see a dent in FFXIV sales or subs over it. Again, it wont breka the game, but itll be somethign note worthy where people will say "Hey remember when they gender locked Viera? Yeah, that was stupid."

Broadly, it appears people do want male Viera.

Now Im still under the belief they will introduce them. Theres a sizable player base demand for them, FFXIV isnt beholden to the lore of other FFs so there is no real lore reason not too, YoshiP Im pretty sure has stated hes not a fan of gender locked races himself, the reveal would be a big deal so theres a reason to withhold them, and (this is more speculative) game companies are more likely to tread carefully in regards to their players bases lately due to all the big upsets in the industry as of late. The safer bet would be not having gender locked races, because its reasonable to assume that more people would flip it over Viera being female only vs those who would say "Gawsh, the Lore of older FF games only had female Viera!"

Also now that I think about hrothgar, they might be a dead race. That is, this was somethign they were planning on implementing and possibly canceled on relatively recently due to other limitations or time. We may not get a race beyond Viera, but old code was put into place regarding it.

Grr.

Will the final fanfest just happen already.