Actual lore regarding the current civilizations on Meracydia (potential spoilers)

[Ranek]

This is one of those things that has always bothered me, apart from being told that the locals are entirely unfriendly, and that the fauna and flora is extremely dangerous, we have very little information regarding the southern continent.

Don't get me wrong, I love the mystery surrounding the place, and given what we did in terms of freeing Tiamat (Along with a certain speech at the end of Endwalker) we can determine we will see it soon enough.

We know about the Centaurs, the plant-based creatures, and likely two broods of Dragons (Bahamut and Tiamat). However, we don't actually have any information regarding the playable races which make it home. Not including the thralls of Sophia, however we might have an idea of what actually lives there.

See, one of the things which was made clear is that the Allagans claimed a substantial portion of the Southern continent, and given that every time we poke around in those ruins we wake something up, it's quite possible there are still dormant Allagan relics awaiting full activation.

[EdwinLi]

I am not surprised we have so little lore about the place, the New World, and the Unknown regions. From what Emet said, Season 2 most likely may focus on exploring the rest of the world along side stopping the new Season 2 Antagonist.

Season 1 was basically only around 25% to 40% of the world and as Emet said we still know very little about the world itself so what we know now maybe completely turned upside down with the new lore from the new regions in Season 2.

A lot of things maybe discovered in these region such as new technology based civilizations, more pure magic based civilization, lore we see as facts now maybe revealed to be false later, and etc.

[Cleretic]

All we really know about the present of Meracydia (outside of 'it's there') is that there at least were dragons there as of 5.5, because Fandaniel used them to summon Lunar Bahamut and we beat through a few at Paglth'an. Maybe he burnt through the whole population, maybe he didn't, we don't know.

We know from the Encyclopedia Eorzea that 'nearly the entire continent' is a wasteland, and that the populations that are there are very reclusive and hostile to outsiders. Because of that, we know nearly nothing.

[Tlamila]

I may remember wrong, but isn't Blue Mage, and some people involved in its quests, from there?

[Tsiron]

I may remember wrong, but isn't Blue Mage, and some people involved in its quests, from there?

You're conflating Meracydia with the New World, which are both continents we haven't seen yet. Blue Mage hails from the latter

[Tlamila]

You're conflating Meracydia with the New World, which are both continents we haven't seen yet. Blue Mage hails from the latter

Thanks for the correction, for some reason I always thought they were the same.

[MikkoAkure]

1.0 had a little more information but we no longer know if that is still canon anymore.

According to leves in 1.0, Limsa Lominsa was actively trading with tribal civilizations in Meracydia but that already seems to have been retconned by the EE saying that the few places that have been repopulated after the destruction are actively hostile to outsiders and that we know nothing of them.

We at least know that miqo’te at one time lived there. It can also be suggested that Sophia’s summoners look like a race that Eorzeans would be familiar with since Urianger calls them out as Meracydians by their language and their clothing, but not their race, while we know that Zurvan and Sephirot’s summoners were centaurs and tree-people respectively. From Equilibrium, we can also deduce they might be normal people who wear clothes because the singer mentions a “uniform” and a “silken dress”.

Other than that, we can guess that the continent grabs randomly from different parts of Africa for its theming since there’s references to Egypt (Ben Ben stone, sphinx, shabti) as well as West Africa (Kple Kple).

[Beytran70]

Also always important to note EE isn't a 100% reliable source as far as in-game knowledge goes. Its possible that only the limited parts of Meracydia that have actually been visited and reported on are wastelands, and that explorers never really got to the good bits. Maybe they just landed on the wrong parts. The devs have options to go back on what was said previously, or there could be relatively new developments that we don't yet know of that will make it cooler to explore, although SE is also not a stranger to having "wasteland" zones anyways with barely anything in them.

[KageTokage]

Judging from the view from the moon there are some patches of greenery in Meracydia still, mostly towards the eastern side of the continent so I imagine it'll still have some jungles and rainforest to poke around in once we get there.

[Denishia]

The "entire continent is a wasteland, there's no large-scale settlements or civilizations' I'm taking with a massive grain of salt - think communal Ishgardian table salt lick.

Not only is it the same offensive stereotype of Africa perpetuated by colonial European powers, it doesn't make any sense both in-universe and out. Meracydia was devastated by Allag - but they've had three Astral eras to rebuild. Lack of communication - and that the MSQ hasn't needed to explain and explore current-day Meracydia yet, mean that they have not given any info (using the aforementioned old trope as shield) as to have a relatively blank canvas. And when -because another ten years means that the chances of eventually exploring Meracydia in the MSQ is highly likely- we do reach the different regions of Meracydia, it will have as many major civilizations and organized smaller settlements as anything in Othard, Aldenard, Ilsabard, or Norvrandt.

We do know that Thavnair trades with Meracydia, so somewhere on the coast is probably the equivalent of ancient Zanzibar, the vastly wealthy and cosmopolitan tropical trading cities with houses built of coral that traded with India.