[Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

[Dikatis]

Right—because when loads of people are saying the same thing, it must still just be a personal issue.

There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.

Cleretic's point is that this isn't a "planned failure" or whatever. The writing they gave us was flawed and easily criticized and a lot of people disliked it including you. That's it. It's not some grand conspiracy. There's plenty of people who like Dawntrail's story who don't frequent the forums so they don't comment here because of the Forum's (justified) reputation of a circlejerk of negativity and hateposting.

Again, there are plenty of valid criticisms of Dawntrail's writing that I agree with, but it's not intentionally bad.

For all its faults, Dawntrail is sincere in its themes of the weight of legacy, the importance of understanding the people you live with (even your enemies), and the dangers of toxic nostalgia. While it could have been executed better, the writer's themes still showed through and came together powerfully in the finale of the main story. And the patch story continues to build upon this with the dark sides of Alexandria and the reintroduction of Queen Sphene to give a contrasting voice to its current state.

I enjoyed Dawntrail's main story a lot. We asked for a summer vacation expansion and we got it. Heck, I'm more sympathetic to Zoraal Ja than most since I know what golden child burnout looks like.

It's fine to criticize something, but to descend into conspiracy theories like this feels wrong when there's nothing to corroborate it.