Quote Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams View Post
Any story is capable of being subject to questioning, analysis, and a variety of interpretations. The forums are indeed one of the lesser-used sites by the playerbase, but it is not the only place where in-depth discussions of the story are taking place. One thing that is certain is that there was not enough material to generate over 600 page threads during Stormblood, which is the only other expansion to have had a controversial reception by the community when it comes to story and writing.
Any story is subject to that - the issue comes more when people declare themselves the ultimate objective arbiters of what is "good" or "bad" rather than acknowledging that they're expressing opinions. I'll disagree that Stormblood was the "only" other expansion to have a controversial reception...honestly, the forums have had negativity like this about every expansion.

In terms of the "600 page thread" (I only know of one that exists), I see it as a matter of two things:

1.) Endwalker has the largest overall playerbase of any expansion. We have the most people actively playing the game during this xpac than during any other. When you have significantly more people playing, a larger pure number of them will make their way over to the forums (even if it's still just a minuscule % of players), which in turn means threads created here will likely be significantly larger.

2.) Endwalker is loved by many more people, particularly compared to Stormblood. An echo chamber of negativity can only sustain itself for so long on its own - it needs an injection of disagreement and debate to keep going. There's so many people who enjoy EW that, again, you find more of them making their way over here and offering their praise. It isn't 600 pages of negativity. Much of it is back-and-forth debating and, yes, trolling between people who were disappointed in EW and people who immensely enjoyed it. The main difference between EW and SB is that there are more people who found EW thoroughly enjoyable and are contributing to the discussion.