Well, how are you defining school exactly? Would the Thaumaturgy Guild in Ul’dah count for example? Are we only talking about academic institutions? Or do martial arts places such as the Pugulist’s Guild or being apprenticed to a blacksmith count? I feel like there’s lots of places in the game where people can go to learn things.

In general, the game setting seems to be going with the ye olden real world scenarios where many “academic institutions” were only for the wealthy (although in XIV I think they all allow women to enroll, which is a stark difference from many historical real world institutions).

Within the world of XIV, magic for the most part is a very academic subject, unlike in other games where some people are just born with it and some aren’t (I personally prefer XIV’s setting where it’s a subject that can be learned by anyone, as I generally dislike the notion that some people are just special and you’re not. Or the idea that someone is fundamentally incapable of learning something. I just can’t agree with the sentiment).

So going back to the starter cities, I would say that the Thaumaturgy Guild in Ul’dah counts as a school in the broad sense of “a place people go to learn things where there are learners and teachers.” But with that train of thought, I could argue that any of the class guilds in the game are such. So, how are we defining “school” exactly? I feel like the analysis of XIV’s setting is going to be different depending on how we define it.