Quote Originally Posted by Enla View Post
The vitriol is a bit much, but people do have a right to voice their concerns. Likewise as pointed out while they didn't /promise/ Male Viera they did their utmost not to actually deny their probability. A lot of this backlash simply wouldn't be here if they had come out from the start and stated Viera were mono-gendered back in Paris and taken out the lore lines about the males during the Alliance Raid quest line. What is happening now is several months worth of hype, debate, and expectation all being thrown out the window and it's no wonder some people are genuinely upset. Especially when it was such an easy problem to outright prevent in the first place.

That said I do feel bad for the dev team who had no hand in how the lore or the marketing of fanfest was presented as well as the forum staff. ESPECIALLY the forum staff. I do not envy their job right now as the forum continues to explode.
Concept art is never an indication of something will be implemented. Concept art is literally drawing up plans and taking what you want, dismissing what you don't want and maybe fusing ideas you do like into something new. Tons of concepts don't make it into a game and some aren't ever even shown to the public. We were also shown demon concept art. Does that mean Square Enix is promising demons as a play-able race? No. Are they actively saying that demons won't be a race? No, there's no need. That's the whole basis behind concept.

They also can't backtrack their lore. Let me explain - Viera are not a single gender consisting of only females. They are not like Hyrule's Gerudo (1 male every 100 years versus 1 or 2 males per every 10?) . Viera have males - they live annexed from the more "social-able" female Viera and are basically exiled from contact from everything to guard their homes.