*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[Jandor]

Honestly? We have no idea how changing the past of the Unsundered World will affect our world. We know that altering the pasts of different shards created different timelines, but the Unsundered world is incredibly dense in aether, to the point it's original inhabitants were outright immune to the effects of Dynamis, while people living in the shards will be transformed by it and be completely lost.

What we did in Elpis was a closed loop of events. Altering the events drastically, as in preventing the sundering of the world, could invariable destroy our timeline and that of the shards, and there's no way of knowing for sure because the Unsundered World's aetheric density is so much higher than ours.

Yeah, I've been operating under the theory that timelines require resources to make in this universe. You split Elpis and you end up with 2 timelines with half as much "stuff" to go around, potentially leaving our timeline too thin to support being split a further 14 ways later on.

Alex does warn about it IIRC. Pull at the threads too much and the whole tapestry will fall apart.

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On a different note, in-universe, I don't think anyone actually knows that the 8th calamity world survived.

[Veloran]

Would you risk throwing all that away?

Again, would you risk that?

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

[LystAP]

What's the point then if we never see any of it? Either it would be a branch timeline we created and then people would be, rightfully, complaining why the devs created this interesting new story beat and then abandoned it, or it would be an alternate universe created by someone who wasn't our character and then people would complain that it doesn't make sense for someone else to create the branch timeline when our character should have done it while time travelling. It's a lose, lose situation.

How is it a lose-lose situation? At most, it becomes a separate world that could conceptually be returned to later. It provides the background to wrap up the rest of the Ancients, such as the members of the Convocation that we haven't met, and learn more about the antics of Azem. It gives the Emet and Hythlodaeus fans something to remember, and would SE really just let those two rest after how successful they were? We don't need to go to that universe ourselves out of resolving tasks or obtaining knowledge - they already have their own version of us to resolve most of their problems. They just need help with the out-of-context issue of Meteion, and then can be put to side material.

And since people can travel back in time, why not forward? We got Raha's soul vessel that we used to control the tower. Conceptually, we could bring someone back with us.

[Lurina]

On a different note, in-universe, I don't think anyone actually knows that the 8th calamity world survived.

We got a message in a bottle from them during The Rising 2019, so the WoL could tell people if they could, you know, use their mouth.

[Kordarion]

How is it a lose-lose situation? At most, it becomes a separate world that could conceptually be returned to later. It provides the background to wrap up the rest of the Ancients, such as the members of the Convocation that we haven't met, and learn more about the antics of Azem. It gives the Emet and Hythlodaeus fans something to remember, and would SE really just let those two rest after how successful they were? We don't need to go to that universe ourselves out of resolving tasks or obtaining knowledge - they already have their own version of us to resolve most of their problems. This just need help with the out-of-context issue of Meteion, and then can be put to side material.

And since people can travel back in time, why not forward? We got Raha's soul vessel that we used to control the tower. Conceptually, we could bring someone back with us.

I mean a loose-loose situation from a meta perspective, we already have people complaining, fairly enough for the most part, that they are disappointed their character didn't save the ancients. The other loss comes from the fact that a number of those same people who wished to personally save the past appear to want to stay in Elpis and away from the sundered world, creating a dynamic where the part of your player base who wants their stories in the saved past are competing with those players, myself included, who would rather focus on more stories in the present over dev time being devoted to their ongoing story. Which I can only see ending in a big old mess for the game.

[Jandor]

We got a message in a bottle from them during The Rising 2019, so the WoL could tell people if they could, you know, use their mouth.

I snuck this letter on board a certain apparatus before it was sent hurtling backwards through time and space. As it wasn't accounted for on the storage log, I could begin to calculate where─and when─it will eventually arrive.

Even if I were to succeed in sending it two centuries in the past, the odds that it will safely reach the hands of that hero of legend are infinitesimal at best. And yet, the chance is not zero, and it is in remote possibility that I place my hopes.

My ancestor─the first of the name I now proudly bear─once told me that the hero he befriended was, for all of his many talents, above all a man possessed of great fortune. Fortune that suggested that the Twelve themselves truly did smile upon him.

In that sense, it's not unreasonable to expect that it is indeed you who is reading my words today. And so, I say: thank you, my friend. Thank you for saving our past, and giving us hope for a brighter future. And above all, please look after him, won't you?
Yours,
Biggs, Third of His Name
Eighteenth President of Garlond Ironworks

As wholesome as it was, I don't think it really confirms they survived. It reads like it was sneakily sent along with G'raha and the tower to me.

[Iscah]

How is it a lose-lose situation? At most, it becomes a separate world that could conceptually be returned to later. It provides the background to wrap up the rest of the Ancients, such as the members of the Convocation that we haven't met, and learn more about the antics of Azem. It gives the Emet and Hythlodaeus fans something to remember, and would SE really just let those two rest after how successful they were? We don't need to go to that universe ourselves out of resolving tasks or obtaining knowledge that they might have - they already have their own version of us.

Honestly, I'm really not interested in seeing further plot with us involved with them. They had a great send-off and bowed out of our story. I think going back and creating a second timeline with them would weaken that from a narrative perspective.

If we could somehow get "bonus playable adventures of Azem and co" without having to send the WoL back there again? Maybe.

But I feel like at least part of the power of the Elpis arc, for me, was that sadness of meeting these people and knowing their future but not having the ability to change it. I wish it was played harder into the concept that we can't tell them anything about the future for fear of changing it and not being able to return to our own present and the people relying on us.

I also think it's much better to believe that, despite sidequests indicating that you have unlimited access to Elpis once attuned to its aetherytes, in the concept of the MSQ itself this was a one-time visit. You go through the portal formed by Elidibus's last act, spend your time there, return, and the portal closes. End of time travel.

This gets messier with Pandæmonium of course, but when we go there for that quest we have to repeat our trip to the Ocular and use the specific crystal to open the portal again. It's not just a matter of us teleporting there because we can.

[Jandor]

This gets messier with Pandæmonium of course, but when we go there for that quest we have to repeat our trip to the Ocular and use the specific crystal to open the portal again. It's not just a matter of us teleporting there because we can.

Yeah, our character may be blessed with an unusual abundance of anima, but even we are not so blessed as to be able to teleport 12,000 years into the past on a whim.

[Lurina]

I also think it's much better to believe that, despite sidequests indicating that you have unlimited access to Elpis once attuned to its aetherytes, in the concept of the MSQ itself this was a one-time visit. You go through the portal formed by Elidibus's last act, spend your time there, return, and the portal closes. End of time travel.

This gets messier with Pandæmonium of course, but when we go there for that quest we have to repeat our trip to the Ocular and use the specific crystal to open the portal again. It's not just a matter of us teleporting there because we can.

Does someone else want to tell them about the Studium quests, or should I?

[Iscah]

Does someone else want to tell them about the Studium quests, or should I?

See the first line of what you quoted from my post.

Ultimately it depends whether the Studium quests are written in tandem with the MSQ, or if they just get handed off to someone else who gets told "here are the zones; think of some reason to collect a thing from each of them".

There's also a degree of outright excusing gameplay elements here. I would also argue that our trip to the First theoretically played out with us there the entire time, teleported there by the Exarch's device and sent back through the portal, complete with a discussion about the Exarch needing to not accidentally drop us in the woods again "next time he summons us" – despite us officially being free to teleport between the worlds via normal aetheryte.

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EDIT: I'm out of post count for the next twelve hours, so please excuse this out-of-sequence quoting from post #32.

They could have used a whole number of other tools to get the point of Elpis across (to make it a distinct place that you can get to only once or twice), but they chose to make a it a full zone that you can travel to. And explicitly in the past. Originally when I saw the teasers, I thought it would just be ruins and we'll interact with more records - perhaps a AI or memory like Emet's shades on the First. That it's a full zone and there are quests that reference traveling to it beyond just for the MSQ already opens the can of worms and dumps them all over the floor.

I don't think it would have the same power if you could only visit the ruins and interact with memories and shades. The whole point is experiencing the ancient world as a real place with living people in it, not Emet's ghostly recreation. It's just unfortunate that it is therefore obliged to be used for "regular zone stuff" like gathering quests.