Quote Originally Posted by Bright-Flower View Post
I agree with this. On the one hand I can see why they would want to put both 'free province from the empire' stories in one expansion but the region split ultimately diluted and hurt BOTH halves IMO.

If it had just been Gyr Abania, we could have explored different factions of the resistance, with different goals and methods, and finding ways to unite them to work together. We could have had Lyse actually taking on more responsibility over time and having a better character arc instead of her becoming leader feeling unearned. We could have explored concepts like the Skulls in much greater depth. Gotten Ala Mhigo as an actual city maybe.

Hell they even made the main city of the expansion Kugane HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EITHER. They haven't even really made use of Kugane as a neutral place yet, it could have made a good place for say the negotiations between Doma and the Empire in 4.2. But nope. It's basically just remained a pit stop on our way to Othard as far as the MSQ was concerned, which is disappointing because the city itself is pretty cool.
I am holding out hope with Thravnir and Garlemald being two of the confirmed locations for Endwalker, that either in patch 5.5 or 5.55 that we actually do make use of the embassies there to lay the ground work or something, like maybe whatever happens with the towers gets so bad that we have to flee Eorzea for a place not afflicted with them at the moment until we can find a way to shut them down, since Doma also has one then this will be Kugane, where we work with Thravanian officials and maybe even some surviving Populares (or just people just opposed to Zenos) who are working on granting diplomatic permission to enter Thravnir. This would also be a call back to 2.55 with us ending up at Camp Dragonhead before going to Ishgard proper after the bloody banquet. Just anything to make it worth it because right now Kugane has some of the most missed potential for a main hub city.