Bringing back areas like Revenants Toll and Idyllshire

[wereotter]

It was fun while it was happening for the players that were there, sure. But it has a bit of a disconnect if you're going through the story later. Bringing in the Domans to help build Revenant's Toll is dissonant when the entire town is already a massive fortress when you get there the first time. Encountering the "backwater" of Idyllshire in the Heavensward story with just a few goblins there is similarly strange when you get there now and see a whole city.

I think the developers recognized this when Stormblood came out and opted to just give fully developed end game hubs right from the start. Not only is it less jarring for the player, but it's an easy piece of development to cut. There's little benefit to making a new setup for the end game zone that will be deleted completely a few months later never to be seen again. Design and build it once, and then those resources can be used for other purposes.

[Kuroka]

Encountering the "backwater" of Idyllshire in the Heavensward story with just a few goblins there is similarly strange when you get there now and see a whole city.

It was really charming, sometimes im amazed by how big it actually became...