*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[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.