Endwalker is the lowest point of this game since 1.0

[Theodric]

I always found the scathing distaste for ARR to be rather bizarre. It was very common for a lot of players to insist that the game only truly started with HW but...that simply wasn't true at all. ARR had a lot of fetch quests that could and were shortened down but plenty of world and character building took place that had actual pay off in later expansions.

Large swathes of the game's established lore seems to be at risk of just being completely retconned out of the blue. Sharlayan, for example, was established as a sinister and shady isolationist nation that sent assassins to kill or threaten anybody who shared knowledge with the outside world without permission. Whenever we explored remnants of Sharlayan outposts there was very much a sense that something was 'off' about the place. Bizarre experiments, dangerous research left behind, unsettling familiars and constructs...

Then when we go to explore the place directly it had all its rough edges sanded away to be little more than a glorified university town where pretty much everyone is very friendly and for some strange reason, there's a bunch of male viera running about despite it being established as part of the worldbuilding that they're exceptionally rare.

All in all, I just hope it comes out someday what the original script for Endwalker entailed since so much of this expansion's story seems stuff that was abruptly changed from one thing to another.

[VentVanitas]

Then when we go to explore the place directly it had all its rough edges sanded away to be little more than a glorified university town where pretty much everyone is very friendly and for some strange reason, there's a bunch of male viera running about despite it being established as part of the worldbuilding that they're exceptionally rare.

I had always struggled to put into words why EW's depiction of Sharlayan bothered me but you hit the nail on the head with this post for me. It comes off more like a college paradise for 20-somethings to me (hell the last stand might as well be a starbucks too) rather than what previous expansions had alluded to.

[IkaraGreydancer]

I had always struggled to put into words why EW's depiction of Sharlayan bothered me but you hit the nail on the head with this post for me. It comes off more like a college paradise for 20-somethings to me (hell the last stand might as well be a starbucks too) rather than what previous expansions had alluded to.

You ever think things were set up that way as a means to keep folks away per the whole isolationist angle? It makes sense to me that they would create a more tense air around themselves to keep the outside world from interfering with their work. And now that their work is complete that facade now longer needs to be kept.
Thancred alone let me know Shar wasn't how some made it seem (to me ofc).

[SomeGuy22]

You ever think things were set up that way as a means to keep folks away per the whole isolationist angle? It makes sense to me that they would create a more tense air around themselves to keep the outside world from interfering with their work.

Sending actual goddamn assassins to murk someone teaching astrology isn't a nation trying to keep up a facade, it's a nation trying to bury dangerous intel. I would understand if it was directly related to the Final Days, but how would teaching astrology to Ishgardians put the mission at risk? It's not like Ishgardians at that point even gave Leveva or her grandpa the time of day anyway, and sending people to kill them in secret isn't the answer if you want to just look uninviting. You don't even get a mention of the astro storyline in EW!

At best it made it look that the forum had an internal divide between their members ethics-wise, and at worst made the entirety of Sharlayan look like they had some gigantic skeletons in their closets. Honestly, both potentially way more interesting worldbuilding than just "we were all pretending to be mean to save the world "

[Lunaxia]

I always found the scathing distaste for ARR to be rather bizarre.

(Please picture this as a sticky note left on a chair because I am not here.)

I honestly enjoyed the whole experience of going through ARR, meeting the characters, exploring the zones and getting to know the game, and I really liked the Coerthas/ Dreams of Ice content and the build-up with the Crystal Braves a lot. There was an official "rating" thread of sorts for the expansions not too long ago, and I realised for me there's a large chunk of ARR I would actually put up with there with HW and parts of ShB - it just suffered from that post 2.0 come down where the quests surrounding the primals and Domans seemed nigh endless.

I think more than anything, and what ARR encapsulated and what I miss the most, is the sense of an unsteady and uncertain world that actually felt like it necessitated the presence of do-gooder adventurers and a group like the Scions. I'm not saying we should have artificially prolonged the threats that previously existed, and that restoring some sense of peace and stability wasn't a logical outcome, but I miss how each character and community we came across felt more like its own mini cohesive story wherein the cast had their own individually-centered and more natural, grey sense of morality and much more varied degrees of self-interest and motivation that did not simply boil down to "grouchy, racist asshole we have to win over" or "an unconditionally supportive sweetheart." We did not implicitly trust and befriend everyone we met, and corruption and conflict were highlighted as significant problems even within "official" organisations we might have actually been expected to trust. What makes Eorzea especially feel so bland these days is that they've tried to address and smooth out every conceivable wrinkle within its various societies, and there's no sense that existed early on in the game that something could switch or change or become precarious at any time as it is wont to do in the real world. As a result, it just feels... very safe, and ultimately very boring.

And it's why how they dealt with areas like Sharlayan or Garlemald feel even more frustrating, because look! Potential conflict! ...but through a combination of steamrolling over there with our Positive Way of Thinking and taking away any sort of human element from their behaviour by making everything a Wizard Did It (Hydaelyn made the Sharlayans secretive! The Ascian Emperor made the Garleans quasi-evil!) it just makes everything very sweet and inoffensive and dull, again. With Garlemald in particular, I don't see why they couldn't have instated a Quintus-type leader to take over who could have been a point of antagonism and abrasion for the moral purity of the Eorzean Alliance, and allow the Garleans to evolve and rebuild and potentially leave a door open to revisit their story further down the road and offer just a minor feeling of uncertainty to a world that desperately needs it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

and for some strange reason, there's a bunch of male viera running about despite it being established as part of the worldbuilding that they're exceptionally rare.

To be fair, that lore never would've survived making them playable anyway.

[DPZ2]

Large swathes of the game's established lore seems to be at risk of just being completely retconned out of the blue. Sharlayan, for example, was established as a sinister and shady isolationist nation that sent assassins to kill or threaten anybody who shared knowledge with the outside world without permission.

Please provide some level of in-game dialogue that lead you to this assessment. Or is this yet another 1.0 thing that got changed when all you knew about the world was wiped out with the reboot of the world in 2.0.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Please provide some level of in-game dialogue that lead you to this assessment. Or is this yet another 1.0 thing that got changed when all you knew about the world was wiped out with the reboot of the world in 2.0.

It's part of the astrologian job quests. Although I always read that as being a specific group, not the entirety of Sharlayan.

[Theodric]

It's part of the astrologian job quests. Although I always read that as being a specific group, not the entirety of Sharlayan.

There's that and also the expeditions into the ruins strewn throughout the Dravanian Hinterlands/Isle of Val that had us encounter all manner of creepy and weird familiars/experiments. The music in relation to Sharlayan before Endwalker always had a very distorted and eerie angle to it as well as if something wasn't quite right. To say nothing of the insinuations of certain levequest/FATE flavour text.

I don't have the energy these days to go hunting down specific text snippets, so people can take it with a pinch of salt. It's not like the writers who took over bother to pay attention to it themselves which is a shame but it is what it is.

Those who are in the know likely know though.