Can we burn Ul'dah to the ground?

[Darthgummibear]

If you burned Ul-dah to the ground, the barrens chat would migrate to other locations. I'd rather keep it all in one place so it's easier to avoid.

[Floortank]

I'm restarting the MSQ on an alt, and seriously, that cesspit needs to be cleansed.

If we start there, our introduction to Ul'dah is of a guard planting drugs on us to get us to "pay a fine" to avoid prison. As the MSQ progresses, we see a few instances of naive people trying to do good and almost getting killed for it, needing the WoL to save their lives. If we do sidequests and talk to non-MSQ npcs, we get numerous instances of outright starvation, utter brutality to the poor, and the rich elite celebrating their luxury on top of it all.

And then come the Copperbell Mines.

One of the so-called good-guys we meet says: "Our ancestors used magic to outright enslave a race of giants and force them to mine for us. When that magic started to break down the giants rebelled, so our ancestors buried them alive for over three hundred years. Well, our rich leaders have decided they want that mine's ore again. In our greed we accidentally set the giants free and they're rampaging around because they're upset with us. We didn't know they were still alive down there, but we're certainly not going to try to help them, that would take too long and cost too much. The most important thing is they're keeping us from our ore, so we want you to go in there and murder all the escaped slaves so our rich can get richer."

The final boss breaks down a wall, yelling about finally being free, so he's clearly not a ravening beast, we can communicate with him. We don't even try, we immediately attack him. While fighting for his life against us, he nevertheless still stops to free another of his people, and that one doesn't even fight us, instead running off to try to free more, and I can't stress this enough, former slaves from centuries-long imprisonment.

We murder them all. For coin and prestige.

...Are we the bad guys?

Interesting questions, worthy of diverse answers. What do you think, though? Are your questions rhetorical?

[Hasrat]

Ul'dah is the city of "I'd sell my mother for the right price." This should come as a shock to no one.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Y'all mother****ers need Dalamud.

[SnowVix]

Ul'Dah would probably be where the Ferengi would land on this particular star, yeah.

[Darthgummibear]

Ul'Dah would probably be where the Ferengi would land on this particular star, yeah.

It would be hilarious to see a conflict between quark and the syndicate.

[Shuuli]

Unfortunately many nations even in reality are built on destroying and/or abusing something that was there before...

By the way all 3 nations had it's "moments" of not being cool. Limsa was just built by pirates that sailed there and killed the residential beast tribe people, until they moved far enough. Then we ask them for help later on when we suffer with the primals that they summoned to take back their own land.

Gridania is basically built on the help of elementals of nature, then we forget about that and wage wars which results on destroying the land, depleting the natural sources to make weapons and ammunition. The botanist quest line explains the despair our botanist teacher has for the land.

Though, most of these are redeemed in one quest or another.

[Haruka_R]

Dunno why you would ask that considering Nanamo's lookin to change that shit, somethin that you should already know. But no, we can't burn down Ul'dah. It's one of my favorite maps.

Lol and no, we aren't bad guys either.

[Sicno]

YES. PLEASE. I'll be the first one to bring some torches if this ever happens. The problem is most of the city is built in stone, but maybe a massive fire spell could do the job. Or maybe we could feed the entire Crystal Tower to Ifrit. I also remember the dragons melting some stone statues in Dravania, so there ARE options.

[Tetsujin]

We murder them all. For coin and prestige.

...Are we the bad guys?

It's not that simple. The giants have gone mad, they've killed everyone they found in their way. I understand why. The injustices done to them are honestly insane but, after miners, it'll be settlements that get trampled. Who knows how many? Personally I'm not one for letting masses die "righteously", nor myself were I the WoL. They picked up a weapon and went on the warpath, understandable, but one shouldn't just lay down and die. Those settlements don't bear the sins of their forefathers either, AND I doubt anyone living outside the walls is related to the creme buying up mines. This is just putting an ugly end to an even uglier story.