We spend a lot of time being show the horrors of the Garlean Empire and what its like under their authoritarian rule, and rightly so, but most of Eorza’s main cities have their own gaping issues that rarely got touched upon. The way Beast Tribes are treated is of course big glaring issue, but Ul'dah is corrupt beyond redemption at this point, and the writers attempts to address this have been offensively poor. Gridania has a real dark current under its serene exterior with how other races are treated, let alone the beast tribes, and oh yeah there are the Elements which rule through fear and sounded TERRIFYING in 1.0. Limsa Lominsa, despite being a nation of pirates, is actually the one that has been developed best. We have Y'shtola calling Merlwyb out on their treatment early on, the story with Ga Bu and eventually Merlwyb goes out of her way to try and make peace with them and the waring pirates under her control. Still not perfect by any means, but I would have liked Gridania and Ul’dah get more attention like that.

Not saying it is necessity a bad thing either that the cities are like they are. I rather like how grey their histories are, makes it more interesting but its strange how we have entirely up-heaved the way many of the expansion based cities but done little with our homelands. We end a war in Ishgard and help it move on to a more fair way of life free of theocracy. With Ala Mhigo we help that city start to move on to a home that is not ruled over by someone on a throne. In Eulmore we literally topped its leader who was FEEDING ITS OWN PEOPLE TO THE POPULATION and help bring civilian rule. Heck when we help free Bozja they decide to keep some of the Garlean laws because they had some real issues with equality prior to their invasion! We get to really help these places and make changes for the better, so its just kinda ashame we are not doing more to make the starting cities better.