Gender locked race?

[Jaywalker]

Let me rephrase: What possible reason would they have to create the lore that male Viera are incredibly few in number and never leave the forest, while they're simultaneously working on creating Viera as a playable race?

Tbh I think it could be an interesting storytelling conflict. Motive-wise, viera lead a pretty tough and limited lifestyle. It wouldn't be crazy to think any of them, including males, might want to leave that for more lifestyle freedom. If the males especially are predominantly fighters, boom. That's a skill they can use to support themselves as adventurers. But with all of this, if there's a limited number of males and they've been fighting off Garlemald to protect the forest and a bunch of viera are leaving the forest behind for a slew of reasons, that creates first some stigma for any player character viera who have left (especially males since there are less) and with it juicy conflict. Also possibly places strain on viera traditions and gender roles, like they might need to send female Viera to defend the forest too.

Not to mention this encourages them to start breeding like rabbits to replenish ranks. ;P

The male/female extreme divide can be used to justify having villages of entirely female or male viera, to maintain continuity with FFXII, to offer further immersion into alternative societies, you name it. Originally in FFXII I suspect it was to make less models to design and just have a bunch of sexy bunny girls, but moving forward it strikes me as more of a nod back but with some wiggle room.

They put themselves in an interesting position where they conceivably could delay male viera release, or technically avoid it (although I think that wouldn't go over well) but they could also work them in no problem. What might be interesting is if they have conditional release, like you unlock male viera in the character creator if you complete xyz quests. There's flexibility atm.

[Gwenorai]

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You're right here. Viera do live really restrictive lives that are actually really sad. The men are forced to live in solitude, to live and die alone - with their only companions being the other wards they take under their wing and whoever they mate with. It's not hard to believe that a female Viera wouldn't want that for her son. The females are guilted into staying and are shunned if they do leave. If females leave, knowing full well what will happen once they do - then why can't the males?

Honestly, the fact we can play as the female shows that maybe just maybe so much has changed in comparison to the FF12/Tactics Ivalice. Gotta think about it honestly, the males and females were all kind of trapped in that strict dogma. The Females just had a matriarch telling them they couldn't go out as well as there fellow sisters. The male has nothing holding him back from leaving other than the teachings of the wood warden and his desire to protect his family and people. This is hardly the first time we've heard such a story; Star Wars and their Jedi have the same issue and some of them still leave the order after being brainwashed as children and forced to follow a strict dogma.

There is nothing in the lore that says that males would be hunted down/killed for leaving. Their only punishment being they are banished. Perhaps they'll expand on that?

It's easy to come up with a back story regarding a Male (And female) Viera WoL in these scenarios:
1) They were born outside of the wood from a Viera mother who left the wood. Halfbreeds exist. It is more than likely that Viera and Hyur are compatible just like Au'ra and Hyur. They would more than likely have the Viera traits. And that's even if they're a halfbreed. A female Viera could have just gotten pregnant and left. Or in recent times, a male Viera takes his interpretation of the 'green word' to leave to protect his lover and unborn child. WoL descended from this.
2) Being a chosen of the mother crystal; the wood - a female spirit is more than likely tied into this; while not the mother crystal per-say, but like the Padajj and the elementals of their wood. Benevolent and serving the mother crystal. WoL are driven by fate and destiny. As I've said before in previous posts it makes perfect sense for a Male to leave by listening to the word of the Wood.

I could honestly come up with so many more!

But dang, there's something extremely sad about being trapped in a jungle/wood all your life and wanting to be free and see so much more. I hope the Viera are given that chance. The female has been given that, now free the males. Shouldn't just end with a sad tale on how they're all just going to end up dying alone.

[Kupocoubo]

So someone in this thread said that the leaker was asked about his icon and I couldn't help but want to find the quote out of curiosity.

"So I asked Blu about extra info and he said to look at his profile pic, It had a Rabbit and a Lion on it. Now the Rabbit is obvious as Viera and I asked if the Lion was something like Ronso since it's the only Lion like race I could think of other than Miqo'te all his said was I was pretty close. I'm hoping its Ronso because they are natural born Blue Mage type fighters so learning BLU from them would be cool. But we will see if this is right soon"

The leaker didn't outright state Ronso, but he did outright state Viera in his posts. I can imagine the second race he could've gotten mixed up about was a different variant of Viera... 'young elezen like'. Meanwhile, the Lion-like look could be fluffy male Viera or an npc race like Lupin.
But yeah, the more I think about how things are panning out now, like someone a while go talked about how the Viera's Forest has been attacked and along with the fact that we shouldn't be able to freely walk in there without a good enough reason then things begin to add up. Also... female Ronso exists so genderlocking them would make the least amount of sense.

Maybe the male vieras are lion like, it would explained why the "lion race" i not ronso but something a bit similar, it must be something new in the series since there isn't a lot of lion like race in FF

[Kupocoubo]

We dont know any other race in the FF series beside the Ronso that are lion alike to fit this animal.
Except race that are yet to be created.

Moombas from FFVIII and Revs from Ivalice are lion like, but there is no reason for them to be playable and not male vieras (same for Ronsos, no one really ask for them and there is no mention of them in the lore of FFXIV)

[Jaywalker]

But dang, there's something extremely sad about being trapped in a jungle/wood all your life and wanting to be free and see so much more. I hope the Viera are given that chance. The female has been given that, now free the males. Shouldn't just end with a sad tale on how they're all just going to end up dying alone.

I agree and adore all of the stuff you posted, but my dude consider how next level sad it gets if the whole reason a WOL Viera leaves is wanting freedom only to end up as the WOL. Bound to save the world over and over again fighting primals because no one else can. Seeing new connections die or turn traitor after leaving everyone they knew and loved behind. Getting exposed to the world's horrors and hunted like an animal by Zenos. Being a hero to everyone but the Wood and the Viera behind them.

WOL has a lot of angst as is, and depending on backstory even more, but Viera it's basically built in. :O

[Gwenorai]

I agree and adore all of the stuff you posted, but my dude consider how next level sad it gets if the whole reason a WOL Viera leaves is wanting freedom only to end up as the WOL. Bound to save the world over and over again fighting primals because no one else can. Seeing new connections die or turn traitor after leaving everyone they knew and loved behind. Getting exposed to the world's horrors and hunted like an animal by Zenos. Being a hero to everyone but the Wood and the Viera behind them.

WOL has a lot of angst as is, and depending on backstory even more, but Viera it's basically built in. :O

Ooooof, we've gone in too deep!
Yeah, damn - that's pretty amazing for a back story. I hope someone takes that and makes a good story out of it! Hopefully, SE!

I'm honestly hoping to meet one that has the 'Echo' that is a main character NPC.

[Crushnight]

for me i do have a preference as to what i'd like male viera to look like but so long as it is added i will be content with however they look there just isn't any reasonable excuse to gender lock any race in ffxiv my hope is that because the viera lore states both genders we should be getting both if they wanted to gender lock it they would've done something similar to the Galka where it is perceived male but there isn't any gender

[Corue]

Most likely, Viera will be female-only and the male-only race will be Ronso. I really hope this isn't the case. But something tells me we're going to be disappointed.

I don't understand this argument.
"We're not getting male Viera because they'd break lore, so instead we're getting a playable beast tribe race."

People have been yelling for Viera for about seven years now. I highly doubt they'd go through all the trouble of making them and at the last minute go "oh yeah sorry we don't want to make half of them so instead we're adding a race from a 20 year old game that we threw in at the last minute."

We haven't seen male Viera because they're either; a) unfinished due to everything n last Fanfest barely being finished in time or b) Yoshi's saving them for the final Fanfest because male Viera ave never been seen before and a reveal would be a massive thing.

Let's not forget that female Ronso exist and are seen quite often throughout X. What reason would they give to genderlock them?

[JBee]

I don't understand this argument.
"We're not getting male Viera because they'd break lore, so instead we're getting a playable beast tribe race."

People have been yelling for Viera for about seven years now. I highly doubt they'd go through all the trouble of making them and at the last minute go "oh yeah sorry we don't want to make half of them so instead we're adding a race from a 20 year old game that we threw in at the last minute."

We haven't seen male Viera because they're either; a) unfinished due to everything n last Fanfest barely being finished in time or b) Yoshi's saving them for the final Fanfest because male Viera ave never been seen before and a reveal would be a massive thing.

Let's not forget that female Ronso exist and are seen quite often throughout X. What reason would they give to genderlock them?

The main reason why people are assuming this is because of the series of leaks that happened last year - almost all of which came true in the precise manner as described, from the MSQ Trial's name to Blue Mage to playing as Alphineau, etc. It wasn't a couple offhand comments of "BLUE MAGE MAY BE IN THE FUTURE" or the like - it was all very specific. Not hard to find it if you google it (not sure how much is in this thread at this point). Their game faqs profile icon is the lion/bunny, which is where this is all coming from. They said explicitly the Viera were coming... and while they never named the Ronso, it was heavily implicated - and shortly after is when their account went private.

So the gender locked races are entirely based on assumption at this point, but from a pretty credible source, based on the that information. I admit I feel like it's all the more credible because the Viera announcement video had all females, but that's not definitive either. Strange decision if they randomly left the males out for no reason, though.

[GenericMagus]

I decided to look back at Au Ra reveal vs Viera reveal. They both show off essentially the same thing, brief clips of both of them running, doing emotes etc. Even the official FFXIV YouTube puts it up as Race Reveal "The Viera", which seems to me to be set in stone that the race will be gender locked. We might of even seen the sub race as well potentially, depending on how they handle it.

For those people who want Male Viera it might be very disappointing come next Fanfest.