Quote Originally Posted by wereotter View Post
It's funny but for me, that was my least favorite part of it all... but maybe that's because by that point I was so sick of being in the Far East.

For me, Stormblood going into it was going to be the tale of the liberation of Ala Mhigo, and I felt the story gave me total whiplash when at level 61 it whisked me off to Othard and left me there until near the end of the expansion. The fact that Ala Mhigo was so glossed over in favor of everything happening in Doma and Kugane made me not much enjoy the expansion as a whole. Compound that with the fact that I started in Ul'Dah and the issue with the Ala Mhigans is something that had been presented to me since level 2 of the main story, so there was an added feeling of dissatisfaction with how they handled that story.

So to that end, my answer would be the expansion gets good when you get to start playing Shadowbringers.
When the story is basically forcing me to focus on the Far East I'll be sure to pick out the Steppes since that area was so different compared to the Ruby Sea or Yanxia. I think at least to me the Steppes channeled the essence of what an Gyr Abania side story could be if done right and that's what really rubs me for it.

If they had advertised the story as freeing the Domans only no one would have these issues, however the lead in from HW and the Griffin was just absolutely fantastic and pretty much had the setup to liberating Ala Mhigo good to go.

It's no secret that during the story process the team got more focused on Doma so much so they HAD to be reminded to put things in Gyr Abania so bring people back. I remember when the devs were talking about primals they said they originally wanted to use Amaterasu as the second story primal, but realized if they did that there would be no reason to visit Gyr Abania until lvl 69, so instead they used Lakshmi.

The beginning of 4.1 had promise with more topics brewing in GA but then 4.2 happened and oof. Really hoping a future msq lets us revisit GA areas or use it as the setup for the next expac akin to how Ghimlyt Dark set up for Shadowbringers.