What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Nilroreo]

We got pulled there by the Crystal Exarch, but he wouldn't have any way of knowing what Zenos was doing on the Source at that time, just the information from his own timeline and whatever the Scions could tell him. I don't think we knew what Zenos was up to while we were on the First, either, so we couldn't tell him. Black Rose was released in the Crystal Exarch's timeline so something different had to have happened there.

To be a bit clearer, I'm questioning why the 8UC happened at all. Zenos went on his quest shortly after his own death, so it's safe to assume he would've done the same thing in G'raha's timeline. Estinien and Gaius weren't doing anything we wouldn't have done, and yet, something still happened differently that resulted in the other timeline falling victim to Black Rose.

I attribute a lot of it to the 'missing' expansion. Supposedly the finale was meant to be in 7.0 or even 8.0 which suggests that large swathes of territory would need to be traversed to get there - and unfortunately, Garlemald appears to have drawn the short straw on that front. Which is a shame, since I found the Russian and Roman influences to be pretty cool and it would have been nice to explore some of the provinces that didn't want to break away from the Empire.

Same. the Ilsabard segments were Imo by far the best thing to come out of this expansion. Hope we get more of that.

[TaleraRistain]

To be a bit clearer, I'm questioning why the 8UC happened at all. Zenos went on his quest shortly after his own death, so it's safe to assume he would've done the same thing in G'raha's timeline. Estinien and Gaius weren't doing anything we wouldn't have done, and yet, something still happened differently that resulted in the other timeline falling victim to Black Rose.

No real way to know. The catalyst to his doing that seems to be the rematch he wanted with us, since he had no love for the power of the empire, so maybe we never met there. Or maybe he didn't come back after death. Maybe Varis killed him instead of his killing Varis. Only thing we know for sure is things lined up in a way to let Black Rose be released.