Given how nearly all of the objections raised around Endwalker's story in the past six months were rooted in discussions around morality, I find it a bit surprising that those selfsame people would claim that morality doesn't matter to them. But I suppose that the 'who is better' discussion in always intrinsic to shipping debates.

Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
...
I think that the original discussion in this thread was based along the lines that you were thinking, with regards to starting cities. And it's probably something that they could consider implementing for 7.0/8.0 with new players just jumping into the story for the first time. Perhaps you could create an 'alternate' start where players start out in a liberated Ala Mhigo, a rebuilt Doma, or a new Garlean republic, and get integrated into the new story from there. It might be worth considering, given how the amount of MSQ that you would need to catch up on as a fresh player could be intimidating.

I suppose the 'faction' concept is more of interest to players coming in from traditional MMOs, like Warcraft/SWOTOR/Warhammer etc., because they're used to it and faction choices are a matter of personal identity to them. It is the sort of thing that game designers generally regret doing in the long run, though, as anything that divides the playerbase and keeps people from playing with each other is generally a bad idea for your community. Even Warcraft has since realized this. I think that it's fine as flavor, when there's significantly more than just two factions, and when said factions are not actually antagonistic to each other in a way that prevents you from partying together. But this game was never really designed around a faction vs. faction mindset.