Gender locked race?

[Shippuu]

So in other words you just want to attack and not have to actually defend any of the statements you made? Can't say I am surprised that you demand hard evidence from your opponents but are incapable of providing it for your arguments.

Not my fault you can't differentiate from a hypothetical as to why they MIGHT do something compared to you saying they absolutely DID do something. One of these things would need hard evidence to prove, the other is simply speculation.
Even then, you provided zero proof for any of your claims, so why should I give you any in return if I needed to?

you went and implied that it would be a major selling point in the Chinese and Korean markets. Now you are saying it is not. Which is it?

So now you're putting words in my mouth? In that direct quote I never said it was a MAJOR selling point. Is a new player race A selling point? yes. Is it a major one? absolutely not or else FFXIV would launch every expansion with them.

Difference in this situation being that we know they did development work on male Viera; remember that concept art?

Concept art, one of the most earliest and often discarded part of development. Where hundreds of thousands of concepts go to the cutting room floor, reiterated by Yoshida just last fanfest during the art panel. Concept art is one of the weakest forms of evidence you could possibly use.

We have hard evidence that male Viera were being developed in game.

Except you really don't, outside of the code being set up for male and female viera, which has plenty of logical reasons for why this may be so even if they are genderlocked, from code uniformity, to a longer term plan to make them unlocked at a later point. Concept are is not evidence of final inclusion. Lore dump is only flavor text written up, and even that text implies they won't be around more likely than being playable.

The onus is on you to provide hard evidence and arguments as to why development work on them was abandoned and not simply make 'what if' claims based on personal opinions and bias.

You're assuming development proceeded past the concept art phase for male Viera and then was later abandoned (with no proof) which is based entirely on the existance of the coding which again, doesn't immediately rule out the possibilty of them being genderlocked. The lore dump doesn't prove they'll be playable either as in the end, it's just flavor text.