Quote Originally Posted by Rulakir View Post
The Ascians didn't even have a story until ShB, which was just one expansion ago. They're also part of the foundational lore of the world, which was unceremoniously rushed in EW. Instead of answering everything, I have even more questions and it's frustrating that because it seems like Yoshi-P (who admits his own staff would like more Ancients) wants to be done with them they'll never be addressed.
The Ascians had a story before 5.0: it was just bad. The writers spent four prior releases setting up "generic bad guys doing generic bad guy things", and held fast to that direction until deciding to pivot towards "but what if they actually had good-ish reasons?". It sucks that we only got one full expansion to develop them as true characters, but that's SE's fault, and it doesn't erase the stuff before it or the idea that it was probably past time to move on from them.