Are <5.0 main villain> fanboys also supportive of <6.1-6.5 main villain>? *SPOILERS*

[Cleretic]

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

So, let me slap down the primer of how FFXIV time travel works. Definitive mechanical explanations don't really exist, because Alexander (or the Tycoon) is the only one who'd know and isn't talking, but we have two different potential results:

1. Stable time loop; the person/thing that goes back always went back, and did whatever resulted in the timeline they originally came from. This happened in Alexander (twice), and with us in Elpis.Because it's all still the same timeline, traveling back to the original point is possible.

2. Divergent timeline; the person/thing that goes back creates an entirely new timeline, with their old one being orphaned. This happened in Shadowbringers, with the Crystal Exarch. Their previous timeline appears to continue existing, but there's no longer a way to access it from the now-prime timeline.

It's unclear what causes the two different events; most likely it's related to the scale/type of the change being made, because all the time-loop changes were very 'clean' in terms of leaving everything where it was, but we don't actually have any evidence. For all we know, it's controlled by the average temperature in Radz-at-Han across both time periods. So on an in-universe level, there's no way to control for this even if anyone wanted to, unless that anyone was Alexander (or the Tycoon).

Now, if you recall, we went to Elpis for a specific reason in a specific scenario: we were following up a lead in finding information, because in the face of the Final Days everyone was at a bit of a dead end on what to do. That meant that, while we were off having a chill-out tea time with Emet and Hyth in the past, everyone in the present was desperately performing damage control and waiting for us to come back with the info. In the long term, they needed us to formulate a solution, but remember that when we got back, people were kind of on the back foot; never mind the long term, I'm not even sure they had a short term left if we didn't come back.

Causing an alternate timeline doesn't create a best-of-both-worlds: it's one response to a Sophie's Choice, as suddenly we can't get back to the present that needs us, leaving them to die even if the ancient world lives (and as an aside, that's a big 'if'). By going back through causing a stable time loop, we make the other response: the ancient world still dies, but we can still save our own.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

Yes, I am aware, but when we first went back, I assumed us going back would lead to the outcome of two timelines like with what happened in Shadowbringers as it makes the most sense given we can keep going back there to do quests, raid and gather. I did not imagine my WoL just going back in history chilling with these people and not mentioning, "Oh, btw, the lot of you are about to die horribly, good luck with that."

I just assumed given it's a place we could continue to return to, our actions would be similar to G'raha's causing a new timeline. But nope, while it was okay to go back in time and save us, the Ancients must die for some reason.