Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
What are you talking about? ARR lore was practically nonexistent and the tone was the very blatant “dark=evil, light=good” that you complained about a few posts above. The Garleans and Ascians were cartoonishly evil back then with no motivation other than “they’re bad guys”.
This stopped being true as soon as 2.X patches started.
Elidibus was introduced very early and this was the first hints there was more to the Ascians than just a dark cult. Helping us for unknown reasons and acting like we shouldn't be on opposite sides (they clearly didn't know what to do with the character at the time and Emet-Selch basically stole his entire concept in ShB 5.0, but the seeds were planted there.)
This is also when the story also becomes more complex than just a black and white two way conflict with Garlemald, with the local politicians taking notice of the WoL's success.