What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lauront]

It does occupy a rather odd spot for me, because I largely took my leave of WoW for similar reasons to which I'm now likely going to take my leave of this game, i.e. I've lost virtually all interest in its lore given how the writers handled it in EW. Putting aside the lack of any major gameplay hooks to it for me, there's nothing that seems particularly egregious about DT from a story vantage, other than I'd really have liked to see them try their hand at a new cast, because I really have no desire to be lumped with this cast yet again. There's just nothing on the horizon or suggested in the likely storywriting approach they'll be taking forward, i.e. post-6.0 EW, that really interests me.

With EW I just felt really dissatisfied with where they took their own story build up and the approach they took to tying it altogether, which bordered on deliberately misrepresenting the story built up in SHB (sometimes, even in other parts of the self-same expansion, EW) and parcelling off "inconvenient" parts of it to more obscure places, sometimes even in crossovers, and all to push a very specific story conclusion that doesn't hold up if you poke it too hard, with a codex the biases of which are not difficult to discern - and the Elidibus minion is still nowhere near in sight. Still, I did enjoy the game a lot during HW all the way to SHB (mixed feelings on the post-5.0 stuff but it still felt like it was going somewhere), and there were some aspects of EW (like most of Pandaemonium) I liked, so I sometimes feel pangs of nostalgia for the game, but it's not really even a case of being mad about it so much as disappointment that it just doesn't seem capable of holding much interest for me. It's in the place now where I'll keep an eye out to see if it's doing anything to surprise me but yes, very low expectations on that front, too. At the very least there's a lot of new game releases from which to choose, and I'll be very busy with Baldur's Gate 3, no doubt.

[Theodric]

It does occupy a rather odd spot for me, because I largely took my leave of WoW for similar reasons to which I'm now likely going to take my leave of this game, i.e. I've lost virtually all interest in its lore given how the writers handled it in EW. Putting aside the lack of any major gameplay hooks to it for me, there's nothing that seems particularly egregious about DT from a story vantage, other than I'd really have liked to see them try their hand at a new cast, because I really have no desire to be lumped with this cast yet again. There's just nothing on the horizon or suggested in the likely storywriting approach they'll be taking forward, i.e. post-6.0 EW, that really interests me.

With EW I just felt really dissatisfied with where they took their own story build up and the approach they took to tying it altogether, which bordered on deliberately misrepresenting the story built up in SHB (sometimes, even in other parts of the self-same expansion, EW) and parcelling off "inconvenient" parts of it to more obscure places, sometimes even in crossovers, and all to push a very specific story conclusion that doesn't hold up if you poke it too hard, with a codex the biases of which are not difficult to discern - and the Elidibus minion is still nowhere near in sight. Still, I did enjoy the game a lot during HW all the way to SHB (mixed feelings on the post-5.0 stuff but it still felt like it was going somewhere), and there were some aspects of EW (like most of Pandaemonium) I liked, so I sometimes feel pangs of nostalgia for the game, but it's not really even a case of being mad about it so much as disappointment that it just doesn't seem capable of holding much interest for me. It's in the place now where I'll keep an eye out to see if it's doing anything to surprise me but yes, very low expectations on that front, too. At the very least there's a lot of new game releases from which to choose, and I'll be very busy with Baldur's Gate 3, no doubt.

Yep. That's an effective summary of my thoughts as well. I don't hate the game, I think it has moments of brilliance...but then those moments of brilliance are followed up by very dubious and questionable writing decisions that really reveal that any depth is seemingly entirely accidental. When the game is at its peak, it's very immersive and incredible. Moments such as stepping into Ishgard for the first time and Amaurot's reveal are two very memorable story beats for me. Yet then there's plenty of intriguing plot threads and characters that are built up and then hastily discarded. Which is pretty strange.

So far the only thing to really stand out to me in regards to 7.0 is Derplander's new design. It's not bad and some nice art has been produced as a result but...it's just baffling that we haven't even fully explored the three main continents yet and already the story is pivoting away from them yet again.