So what is a Hrothgar?

[Penthea]

Don't recall them being "badly received," if anything, the fact that one of the main NPCs was a female Roegadyn when there was only males available being a talking point. People just requested for the opposite genders of the spiritual successors of XI since they were remaking the game anyway.

Man I didn't even play FFXI and I heard about the gender locking being badly received before I played FFXIV. I really wonder how you managed to avoid seeing criticisms about it.

It's as plain as day that the really vocal people in that thread want male viera and if you think that's not an underlying motive to push for "unlocking" possible genderlocked races you're being willfully obtuse.

I'm being obtuse? SE released male viera concept art for HW. At one point they were planning to put them as a playable race and gender combo in the game. Now that you know this, do you still think it is obtuse to ask for the male viera now that female viera have been announced? Currently the playerbase feels it is getting only half of what they have been waiting years for.

The simplest reason is because viera are not a creation of XIV. They are immigrated from another different story, game, whatever- where females are the primary representatives of that setting and males have not played any part in it. Not to say that they can't simply write-them in with some weak Deus ex Machina that comes out of nowehere, but I admit I'd respect the devs more if they adhered to the source game they borrowed them from.

And yet the image I linked above shows that SE had intended to make male viera playable. It is definitely not outside the realms of possibility. Not just because SE own all the lore and they can do what they want with it, but also because there is proof that they wanted players to be able to be male viera.

By the way miqo'te and roegadyn are pretty much immigrated from FFXI. In 1.0 they had the exact same gender locking as their FFXI counterparts. Even the elezen and lalafells are just newer versions of the elvaan and tarutaru. Tataru's name is most likely a nod to the tarutaru race.

So now that you know this as well, have you now lost respect for the devs because they removed lore-based gender locking during the life cycle of FFXIV with races heavily inspired by FFXI's gender locked races?