Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
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It wasn't even my theory. I'm just saying it was one of the lines people were speculating along. One of the more extreme lines, but still, "Old Sharlayan looks like Idyllshire" is not in itself a thing that disproves it.

For my part, I had definitely noted the prior casting of Sharlayan as not entirely "good" even though it was the "good characters'" homeland. I expected more of that political scheming hinted at in the AST quests to come to the fore. Lots of factions, not all of them trustworthy, at least one already proven to be willing to assassinate you if you inconvenience their agenda.

I also think I was on the line that something significant might have happened 15 years ago that was a secret real reason for the exodus, and a shift towards the Sharlayans being more secretive – perhaps they dug too deep in the Antitower and were afraid of what they found, or were tempered simply by looking at the aetherial sea, or something happened back in Old Sharlayan that changed the mindset of the ruling class. (In which case that would explain the Scions being unaware of a shift in mood back home, as they spent that time in Eorzea.)

Yes it's a lot of ifs and maybes, but that's what we do when speculating. (Back when the lore forum actually had a colony of people who wanted to speculate.) I'd have to dig back into the forum discussions but I think it was a pretty common perception that the Sharlayans were going to be more difficult to work with than they ultimately were.

That said, I've gotten the impression from interviews that they sometimes change their original intended plot direction just to subvert expectations, which thoroughly sours my inclination to discuss what I expect to happen.