Quote Originally Posted by Boblawblah View Post
*Checks metacritic*

GoT season 8: 4.1

Endwalker: 9.1

I have to wonder, do you ever just think to yourselves "You know what? I'm in the minority here. The majority of players really loved this, and I didn't."? Because at least then I could sympathize with people hating Endwalker. I can see how people would hate it. I disliked some parts of it. Comparing it to Season 8 of GoT however, which was almost universally criticized for rushing to finish the story is just being disingenuous.

YOU didn't like it. From really any metric you can take however, most FFXIV players did.
Not like "most" players liking it is especially hard to achieve. Most players in this game do not look at a story with any kind of critical eye, they do exactly what the company wants from them, buy product, consume product, get excited for next product.

All Endwalker really needed to do for a 9/10 after the ShB hype machine was give them their favourite characters from previous expansions to fangirl/fanboy over, some pretty visuals to look at, grand speeches about saving the world and some kind of feel good "message" that ties everything together neatly while actually ending the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.

You don't need to necessarily provide an actual good product for people to rate it highly, best example being the 2022 movie Glass Onion.
It sits at a 92% critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes despite it's plot having more holes than swiss cheese and every one of it's miriad plot contrivances being explained away by "the villains are just really stupid".