Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Barachim]

Indeed. It was really stupid.

A lot of the praise he's getting as a villain is totally unjustified and largely based on him having little to no dialogue.

I'm surprised he's getting any praise at all. He's easily the worst villain in the franchise. I can't think of anyone worse off the top of my head

[ThorneDynasty]

Zoraal Ja was pretty incomprehensible for how few lines he has, his motivation seeming to change every single time he speaks.

I know people have broken down he wants people to fear defying him in war. But it really doesn't come across like that when he was lamenting how lightly the Pelupelu regarded war, for instance. They weren't defiant, they were looking to profiteer. It makes no sense for him to bring it up there, with his own future subjects whose flippance didn't include any kind of defiance of authority. The subtext of "I'm going to scare these people so shitless they'll never think of rising up against me" doesn't make any sense in that context. "I want to teach these would-be war profiteers how terrible war actually is" 100% comes across like he's just pushing an anti-war ideology in an extreme fashion.

[Raven2014]

Zoraal Ja was pretty incomprehensible for how few lines he has, his motivation seeming to change every single time he speaks.

I know people have broken down he wants people to fear defying him in war. But it really doesn't come across that when he was lamenting how lightly the Pelupelu regarded war, for instance. They weren't defiant, they were looking to profiteer. It makes no sense for him to bring it up there, with his own future subjects whose flippance didn't include any kind defiance of authority. The subtext of "I'm going to scare these people so shitless they'll never think of rising up against me" doesn't make any in that context. "I want to teach these would-be war profiteers how terrible war actually is" 100% comes across like he's just pushing an anti-war ideology in an extreme fashion.

I'm surprised he's getting any praise at all. He's easily the worst villain in the franchise. I can't think of anyone worse off the top of my head

It's likely a down-ballot effect because of how bad Wuk Lamat is. We have 3 candidates, and one of them suck so freaking bad while also hoarding all the screen time, it makes people defer to the other two as a form of cope. At this point I'm sure more or less people are thinking any other character would be a better option than Wuk even if said characters themselves are not that good.

I hope behind the scene Yoshi and his team realized that the reason why Zoraal Ja is more popular than they thought, it shouldn't be a surprise when they put one and one together.

[arstoka]

I have a legitimate question regarding the nature of souls and I was hoping someone might be able to help clarify.

This is my understanding so far: souls can be extracted from living beings and injected into other entities (such as other "humans", "allied society members" and, "robots"(?).)

Examples of these: soul transference became plot noteworthy with the Sahagan chief who body hopped during the end of ARR to summon Leviathan (something they learned from the Ascians).

The Ala Mhigo dungeon had a mechanic where the player's souls were forcefully ejected from the body.

In Endwalker, Zenos possesses the WOL's body.

In Dawntrail Otis exists (?).

We know that the reason why Ascians did not die is because of their ability to reconstitute their souls and that process could only be disrupted through channelling massive quantities through white auracite.

We also learn that souls are "washed" of their memories through the Aetherial Sea after death and then are reborn/reincarnated into living beings. These souls can have memories or traits imprinted onto them at their very core (such as, if I recall correctly, memories of the Final Days).

We are told in Dawntrail that souls are used as currency and, when someone dies, they use a new Soul to revive them. The soul is 'blank' as it was artificially purified of its memories and those memories stored as Endless.

My question is, can souls be destroyed? If yes, by what process?
Following that train of logic, the souls would never be able to return to the Aetherial Sea which causes a huge issue because...as far as we're aware, new Souls cannot be created (or at least not manufactured, as was the case in Endwalker).

If a soul is destroyed in death then...we have a plot hole.

If a soul is not easily destroyed then why is there not a system to reconnect the soul with the body (as seen in the Ala Mhigo dungeon).

If the Soul was forcefully removed from the person, even if cleansed, would it not try to return to the original body? Is it the fact the memories are overwritten that it doesn't do this?

I have so many questions about the soul technology and revivification properties and I feel like I missed on on some key elements and would love clarification because I'm having such a rough time wrapping my head around this concept and how it's supposed to work considering the world building, lore and implications...

[Bellybell]

-

from what i gather,
- they used special equipment to harvest the soul(as shown while they raid the town)
- harvested soul will be 'process' in the tower
- processed soul are used in the regulator

so basically, regulator probably wouldn't have the function to reconnect the soul when the body died,
they just pumping the soul in the body similar to how blood transfusion after blood loss

[FlowerMilk]

It's just a shounen anime story and I've always hated shounen anime, I've always been more of a shoujo anime girly for sure. Less Cat Naruto shounen writing, and more Gaia/Ryne shoujo writing in the future please. I would bet $100 that if Wuk Lamat had been a dude character nobody would even bother defending this crappy shounen character writing.

[lolnotacat]

It's just a shounen anime story and I've always hated shounen anime, I've always been more of a shoujo anime girly for sure. Less Cat Naruto shounen writing, and more Gaia/Ryne shoujo writing in the future please. I would bet $100 that if Wuk Lamat had been a dude character nobody would even bother defending this crappy shounen character writing.

I think a shounen anime story would've been OK if it were low stakes like we were promised, and we had a likable main character. The issue isn't that it was shounen, it's that it was just poorly paced, not thought out well (longterm and short term), and had bland or outright annoying characters.

Imagine if we had the ShB storyline with DT's pacing, lack of nuance, and Ryne just following us everywhere to become the best oracle of light evar then had a shoujo romance with emet to make him not be evil. That would've been the Dawntrail version of Shadowbringers and it would've been horrible.

It's not the type of story, it's who's writing it and the care they put into what they're creating.

[Barachim]

It's just a shounen anime story and I've always hated shounen anime, I've always been more of a shoujo anime girly for sure. Less Cat Naruto shounen writing, and more Gaia/Ryne shoujo writing in the future please. I would bet $100 that if Wuk Lamat had been a dude character nobody would even bother defending this crappy shounen character writing.

With the new Raid Tier we get a shounen anime style tournament arc, with 3 catgirls who are instantly more interesting than Wuk Lamat. So no, her being a girl is not the problem. A guy would have been just as insufferable.

It all comes down to the bad writing. Even just ignoring Wuk Lamat, there's not really much we do on our own for fun during the MSQ. When we leave with Erenville and are finally free of Wuk Lamat, we just ended up hunting down the bracelet she gifted to Namikka.

[All_Nonsense]

But guys it's a new arc! Wait until 9.0 when it starts to pick up!!! -_-

Your sarcasm brings up a good point. This is the irony of people who are defending the quality of the story writing. We pay a monthly subscription in addition to the cost of a full premium AAA release for a license to play the expansion. The expectation is that we are all going to get high quality and highly professionally executed writing - regardless of whether or not the story is "good." I can live with not liking a particular story, but I refuse to accept one that is poorly written, has plot holes, exposition gaps, dues ex machina every other scene, pacing issues, and continuity problems.

I had someone defending the game tell me that if I thought I knew so much about proper story writing then why don't I go write the story. Answer: I didn't make a billion dollars since EW release. But I know who did, and I expect more from them.

On the subject of "new arcs" and being fresh and exciting and fun, let's take a look at a free to play game, and a gacha game at that. Honkai Star Rail (HSR) released and completed their Penacony arc this year. In the span of approximately 6ish months, they delivered a beautiful, immersive, emotional, and quite nearly fully voice acted experience that I honestly believe is one of the best stories in gaming in the past 5 years. And it's a free gacha game. I can't believe I'm comparing a paid subscription MMO to a gacha game and preferring the story in the gacha game. Hell, I can't believe I'm praising the story in a gacha game - it feels wrong. Point is, the story of Penacony is almost completely air-tight and doesn't really relate to the rest of the prior story at all except for some core lore threads that have been following us the entire time in addition to its main attachment to the primary plot. Everything from start to finish from the characters, setting, the "stakes" and everything else in-between was introduced and subsequently tied off in a very beautiful and satisfactory manner in the span of approximately 40 hours of gameplay. If a free gacha game can deliver that in less than a year, I have MUCH higher expectations for a paid MMO that boasts the story as one of their primary strengths, and requires the player to play through it before getting into the endgame content. Because I've spent close to $1000 playing FF14 over the years, and $0 playing HSR. Mea culpa.

To anyone building a strawman out of my gacha comparison, allow me to give you an example that better suits your frame of reference: ShB's story was also fresh and new and mostly air-tight except where it tied into and fleshed out the core lore, and it came after mixed reviews of StB. Deja vu. Here's hoping that 8.0 is the next ShB

[Voidmage]

Not sure on everything. Someone correct me please if something is wrong.
Some stuff has been a long time ago.

from what i gather,
- they used special equipment to harvest the soul(as shown while they raid the town)
- harvested soul will be 'process' in the tower
- processed soul are used in the regulator

so basically, regulator probably wouldn't have the function to reconnect the soul when the body died,
they just pumping the soul in the body similar to how blood transfusion after blood loss

To add to this:

It's implied that a soul is drawn to it's own body (our body switch in EW).

We know that the reason why Ascians did not die is because of their ability to reconstitute their souls and that process could only be disrupted through channelling massive quantities through white auracite.

It's also because they retreat to the space between worlds.

We also learn that souls are "washed" of their memories through the Aetherial Sea after death and then are reborn/reincarnated into living beings. These souls can have memories or traits imprinted onto them at their very core (such as, if I recall correctly, memories of the Final Days).

Only the souls with the echo are like that if I remember correctly.
Other souls have the memories washed away and are broken down into just aether. An almagation of that aether then forms a new soul.
An individual without the echo is an amalgation of different aether and broken down souls.
The stuff in the Aetherial sea like Papalymo's staff and so seems to be the memories.

We are told in Dawntrail that souls are used as currency and, when someone dies, they use a new Soul to revive them. The soul is 'blank' as it was artificially purified of its memories and those memories stored as Endless.

As far as I understood it's not the entire soul.
When a person dies the aether of a soul loses a bit of itself to the lifestream.
The device uses another soul to "fix the holes" with the missing aether and the memories are then overwritten via backup to delete any traces of the spare soul. I guess thats also the reason for the sickness in the raid story.
The voidsent also were implied to have changes in personality sometimes. (remember that one who absorbed his friend?)

My question is, can souls be destroyed? If yes, by what process?
Following that train of logic, the souls would never be able to return to the Aetherial Sea which causes a huge issue because...as far as we're aware, new Souls cannot be created (or at least not manufactured, as was the case in Endwalker).

Yes, a soul can be destroyed if it is completely used up as fuel. That was Venat's fate for example and I think the fate of Scathach (Diablo used the nullstone on her).

The other point. Actually a soul can be created.
The ancients never discovered how but we did.
The Anima weapon from heavensward is more or less that.

If a soul is not easily destroyed then why is there not a system to reconnect the soul with the body (as seen in the Ala Mhigo dungeon).

You mean from the alexandrians?
They seemed to prefer the method with the memory and spare soul stuff.
Otis sayed that he was an experiment and they didn't follow it further.
They prefered an artificial heaven to an immortal body.

If the Soul was forcefully removed from the person, even if cleansed, would it not try to return to the original body? Is it the fact the memories are overwritten that it doesn't do this?

Good question. Is a soul only drawn to the body if it's especially strong or has the echo (the Ala Migho boss and the body switch seem to imply that) or is it a memory thing?

It's all an interesting concept and since Ala Mhigo and the EW scene I allways thought they would use all that to make an actual thread to the WoL.
The whole Memory thing now and the soul transplanting stuff opens interesting potential dangers.

That's also why I don't think the tournament story is really low stakes.
If we die there our soul is used up. No reincarnation, no WoL. It would be the end probably.

On the other hand the void storyline made it clear that if a voidsent died it was in danger of being absorbed by it's former victims.
So what is it?