Quote Originally Posted by SugarPuff View Post
I mean, I was thinking of it more in terms of how writers (particularly in the horror and sci-fi genre) don't need to worry about destroying the worlds they've created, to whatever ends they see fit. They may have put just as many, or more, hours into the creative process but it's not the same as a game franchise. It's not a failing of FFXIV in my opinion, but a limitation inherent to the media that perhaps could have been foreseen by the creators. If it were a novel or a movie I would wonder if the characters were going to somehow end up living in a different world, because the writers would have nothing to lose by doing it, but that's not true of FFXIV.
I can't think of any examples of a story ending with the world getting destroyed despite the heroes' attempts to save it. I wouldn't ever anticipate it to happen unless there's some kind of specific foreshadowing going on within the individual story.

A stand-alone story still has narrative rules. It still creates a world and it's still a tragic thing if that world gets destroyed - for the people within the story if not for the reader, but quite possibly for the reader as well. Unless you can write a convincing case for it being a good (or at least narratively enjoyable) thing that the heroes failed and the world got destroyed, people are not likely to find it a satisfying ending.

The average story that starts with a threat to the world will end with the threat being averted by the heroes. That is just how stories work at a basic level. It's not something that the writers of FFXIV have any good reason to subvert even if they wanted to and narratively were free to do so.