Quote Originally Posted by Lium View Post
As someone who just finished the raids, let me just say as a history and mythology nerd I greatly appreciated this story and strongly disagree with those that say they feel bitter about the writers explaining the origins of the Twelve.

It had to be done when you have set up an entire story based on an all-powerful ancient civilization with the literal ability to create gods and to destroy entire worlds.

If the Twelve’s origins were never revealed, you can rest assured one of the very first questions people would ask was, “Wait what happened to the Twelve? Why would they let all this happen? Are they tied to the sundering in some way?”
I still don't think the setting needed near-literal gods that were left behind by Hydaelyn to watch us and the whole thing sort of comes out of left field.

Creating Zodiark and Hydaelyn were one thing, and the setting made it out that creating actual gods required heavy sacrifice and were a big deal, but the Twelve being "real" comes out of left field when we've spent 10 years putting down primal fakes from other peoples' mythologies. It was already established in the setting by Gaius very famously when he treats our Twelve as no different than anyone else's religions in that it's just empty belief and to call them down is the same as primal summoning. I don't many players after that actually believed the Twelve were real gods doing stuff or responsible for anything at all, let alone the Sundering. It's one thing to have them be half-rememberings of Ancients, but another to be actual Ancient themselves or at least a sliver of their soul as a real-ish god created by Hydaelyn just for 1 region of the world.

It's just really awkward to come back from "gods are all myth" to say "Actually the gods in this one backwater region of the planet are actually real". Especially since they don't actually do anything except accepting prayer and they have no real, tangible impact on the story or the setting before or after they leave.

Not everything in a story requires explanation and it can make the setting feel smaller if there are no mysteries or mythologies.