What is canon and what is not (Spoilers)

[Ruinfeild]

May seem like a strange topic to bring up (though this is meant more for RP servers in FFXIV) but with the new patch bringing people back and lots of RP events filling up with people again, I noticed the topic coming up of what is canon and what isn't (such as people bringing up the mention of anything from the first as if their character has been there.)

Now I know it is impossible to really put down for all players to agree on what is allowed and what they will accept but perhaps in this thread we can at least get an idea of what should be accepted by at least a good amount of players.

Like for myself, the discussions of a PC being a warrior of light/darkness, the first (or shadowbringers in general), and just being able to travel there as a PC should be canon.

I do want to get this thread going to get an idea of what a lot of RPers or lore nuts see as acceptable.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

If it happens in the story, its canon, anything player made is not canon.

[VenKitsune]

If it happens in the story, its canon, anything player made is not canon.

Thats not specifically true. For example, pretty much ALL of the ARR Primals were canonically solo'd by the warrior of light, he/she did not have 7 friends that all conveniently have the echo along to help kill them. So despite the game clearly putting you in a full party, it isnt canon. This is especially noticeable on the very first primal you fight, ifrit - You're captured alongside some flames soldiers and everyone but you gets tempered, the amaljaa run away when they take you for some unholy abomination that can resist their lords will and then you fight ifrit. During that whole exchange the WOL did not have time to go out and find 3 people with the echo to help fight Ifrit, especially when you're introduced to minfillia they all act as if echo is an extremely rare thing.

To answer OP's question - All the other "Adventurers" in the first are native to the first, canonically. The WOL/WOD is the ONLY person or thing that can travel between worlds at will. After all, The Crystal exarch summoned specifically the Source's Warrior of Light (Player), of which there is only one and it wouldn't make sense for rando adventurer's to be able to travel between worlds at will especially when the scions could not.

[WhiteArchmage]

The general rule I think is that:

Anything in the MSQ is hard canon.
Sidequests are semi-canon until the MSQ brings them up and confirms them. Like Crystal Tower which has been deemed canon since 5.3 (technically speaking since 5.0, but with some Time Travel Tense Problem meaning that it's happened in the past but can still happen in your future, but 5.3 NEEDS the events of CT)
Omega, Alexander, and Coil are kind of canon in that the first 2 are not REQUIRED for 5.x, but greatly flesh it out.
Ivalice is generally canon as of 4.5, given that the Dalmascan Resistance shows up in an Easter Egg; and the Wandering Dramaturge from the Prima Vista is now in the Blades of Gunhildr storyline.
IIRC the only thing not SUPER canon are Hildibrand Quests... and even then I'm not that sure because the Scholasticate quests needed the ARR Hildibrand quests to unlock, and Ultros, Typhon, and Yojimbo have become part of the Gold Saucer...

However, technically speaking, the PC is not the only one of Hydaelin's Chosen (there are other people in the opening cutscene), but IS the only "Warrior of Light". The other PCs you run into are random adventurers who are probably Echo-blessed so as to fight primals but aren't THE WoL/D. The game, at least, doesn't treat their race/gender combinations as anything special (like Moonkeeper Miqo'te Males being rare, or Au Ra not being shot on sight in Coerthas pre-3.0); any Lore about it would be the RPers personal backstory, I'm guessing.

And traveling to/from the First... afaik only The WoL/D should be able to do that in both body and soul... any Loremongers are free to correct me on this one.

[MariaArvana]

And traveling to/from the First... afaik only The WoL/D should be able to do that in both body and soul... any Loremongers are free to correct me on this one.

Considering it took harnessing the power of an almightily powerful construct like Omega to travel across the rift, pretty much anyone that's not the WoL of the story/An ascian would never be able to travel there unless the MSQ showcases another method to do so. In the current MSQ, only the player character has the ability to travel between worlds.

Which to answer the OP's thoughts, is while they're canon, you'd have to write some intensely extreme reason why your RP character can even travel there in the first place, to the point it'd be heavily immersion breaking unless you're just straight up RPing as the WoL/An Ascian (Both of which are generally frowned upon, afaik, as many people see it as far too 'snowflakey' and many aren't interested in RPing with such characters. Also because tbh, they're extremely boring cop-outs for writing an intricate life story for your character.)

So pretty much unless you RP with others that want to bring the First and those types of themes into it and don't mind bending lore to do so, RPing as a WoL/WoD & interacting with the first are very frowned upon.

[KayRadley]

The general rule I think is that:

Anything in the MSQ is hard canon.
Sidequests are semi-canon until the MSQ brings them up and confirms them. Like Crystal Tower which has been deemed canon since 5.3 (technically speaking since 5.0, but with some Time Travel Tense Problem meaning that it's happened in the past but can still happen in your future, but 5.3 NEEDS the events of CT)
Omega, Alexander, and Coil are kind of canon in that the first 2 are not REQUIRED for 5.x, but greatly flesh it out.
Ivalice is generally canon as of 4.5, given that the Dalmascan Resistance shows up in an Easter Egg; and the Wandering Dramaturge from the Prima Vista is now in the Blades of Gunhildr storyline.
IIRC the only thing not SUPER canon are Hildibrand Quests... and even then I'm not that sure because the Scholasticate quests needed the ARR Hildibrand quests to unlock, and Ultros, Typhon, and Yojimbo have become part of the Gold Saucer...

However, technically speaking, the PC is not the only one of Hydaelin's Chosen (there are other people in the opening cutscene), but IS the only "Warrior of Light". The other PCs you run into are random adventurers who are probably Echo-blessed so as to fight primals but aren't THE WoL/D. The game, at least, doesn't treat their race/gender combinations as anything special (like Moonkeeper Miqo'te Males being rare, or Au Ra not being shot on sight in Coerthas pre-3.0); any Lore about it would be the RPers personal backstory, I'm guessing.

And traveling to/from the First... afaik only The WoL/D should be able to do that in both body and soul... any Loremongers are free to correct me on this one.

In regards to the First: I think the same deal applies with other players as in the Source. You are the Warrior of Darkness and able to move freely between worlds, they are inhabitants of the First.

[Melichoir]

My understanding is that more or less, if it's handed to you by a quest giver and isnt a Cross over Event - its canon.

If you want to be more nuanced, MSQ is hard Canon. This is the undisputed story, but it will take liberties in assuming youve participated in certain side events at times.

Side Quests, Beast tribe Quests, Raids, etc are all soft canon events and they exist more to flesh out the world and explain some of the things going on that influence the MSQ. You dont have to do them, but they do impact your understanding of whats going on in the MSQ and the world at large. There are admittedly inconsistencies in the timeline of things, but that is just the nature of playing an MMO. Not much you can do about that.

As examples: CT, Alexander Raids, and Omega Weapon help fully explain how ShB can even occur as technology from these events allow for the creation of the tower machination that makes the CT go to the first in the first place. If you havent done it, it is implied you know about it and the MSQ kind of glosses over this. But these events do take place one way or another, regardless of your involvement.

Event Holiday Quests are incredibly loose canon. They do happen and the NPCs will recognize you if you do the event repeatedly through the years, but what happens isnt reflected in MSQ or indicative on how much time has passed. It's almost like Holiday Quests are in their own separate timeline from the MSQ. Holiday quests may reference MSQ stuff loosely on occassion, but very rarely do the actually impact one another.

Cross Over Quests are canon in name only. They dont affect MSQ or seem to have any real world impact on things. These are purely cosmetic sub mini stories and games.

[Iscah]

If you want to be more nuanced, MSQ is hard Canon. This is the undisputed story, but it will take liberties in assuming youve participated in certain side events at times.

Actually it's sort of the opposite. The "undisputed story" as intended by the writers includes the optional events.

Meanwhile, it does not assume you've participated in events if you haven't - this is where canon starts to twist itself according to your individual game progress.

The canon version of the Binding Coil, for example, ends with Alisaie inspired to depart on a journey of self-discovery. When she rejoins you, she makes reference to that time you spent together.

If you haven't progressed the Coils storyline by that point in the MSQ, she will instead mention your partial progress, or maybe that you haven't met since you first encountered each other early in the game, and she's been on a journey for some vague reason. It's a less satisfying version of events, and it's not how the story is supposed to go, but the game will do its best to alter the dialogue to your individual situation if you don't look too closely at the rough edges. It's only meant to be a temporary non-canon version of events until you see how the story actually played out.

Of course, this approach only works because Alisaie isn't visibly in any different a state whether you completed the story or not, so the difference can be swept over with a few altered lines of dialogue. If the state of something has actually changed, the MSQ will probably avoid referencing it - but may make the earlier quest a prerequisite if it's necessary.

On your hidden paragraph (spoilers up to 5.3):

The CT/Alexander/Omega trio are a special case because of the time travel element. The game is not pretending you have done them by the point that Shadowbringers takes place - only that they will have happened by the future point that Cid needs the information to develop his time machine concept. This is why the game can treat them as definite fact without requiring you to have done them first. If you haven't done CT during 5.0 then the Exarch will say that you haven't met his past self yet.

Again, the reasoning is quite flimsy if you look at it too closely and it all makes a lot more sense if you did the other stories when you should have, but their route around it is not pretending that you've completed them.

Note that the Crystal Tower alone has become mandatory as of 5.3 - not because of its importance to Shadowbringers' plot but because it is absolutely necessary for those events to have happened first. You cannot find G'raha Tia asleep in the tower if he hasn't shut himself in there first. If the writers simply pretended you'd done things when you haven't, this wouldn't be a problem - you'd simply find him there whether you'd ever met him (in that form) before or not. But that isn't how the story handles things. The sequence of events must be that you meet G'raha, then see him shut in the tower, then get him out again. You can put it off but you will not see those events happen out of sequence.

[DamianFatale]

The general rule I think is that:

Anything in the MSQ is hard canon.
Sidequests are semi-canon until the MSQ brings them up and confirms them. Like Crystal Tower which has been deemed canon since 5.3 (technically speaking since 5.0, but with some Time Travel Tense Problem meaning that it's happened in the past but can still happen in your future, but 5.3 NEEDS the events of CT)
Omega, Alexander, and Coil are kind of canon in that the first 2 are not REQUIRED for 5.x, but greatly flesh it out.
Ivalice is generally canon as of 4.5, given that the Dalmascan Resistance shows up in an Easter Egg; and the Wandering Dramaturge from the Prima Vista is now in the Blades of Gunhildr storyline.
IIRC the only thing not SUPER canon are Hildibrand Quests... and even then I'm not that sure because the Scholasticate quests needed the ARR Hildibrand quests to unlock, and Ultros, Typhon, and Yojimbo have become part of the Gold Saucer...

However, technically speaking, the PC is not the only one of Hydaelin's Chosen (there are other people in the opening cutscene), but IS the only "Warrior of Light". The other PCs you run into are random adventurers who are probably Echo-blessed so as to fight primals but aren't THE WoL/D. The game, at least, doesn't treat their race/gender combinations as anything special (like Moonkeeper Miqo'te Males being rare, or Au Ra not being shot on sight in Coerthas pre-3.0); any Lore about it would be the RPers personal backstory, I'm guessing.

And traveling to/from the First... afaik only The WoL/D should be able to do that in both body and soul... any Loremongers are free to correct me on this one.

The thing about Coerthas happened. A tribe of Au Ra migrated to Coerthas and was almost completely wiped out. Only one person remains. He is the Dark Knight quest giver.

[Ruinfeild]

MSQ being hard canon I get but didn't know much about the side quests (since Balmung has a wide range of characters who play as what they want). So the MSQ being hard canon is one I think everyone can agree on (and even side quests depending on what they are and who has done them).

When it comes to the WoL/Ascian, it is subjective if they are boring and the like but people still like to try or even do play as them. Sure there are a lot more as WhiteArchmage put it that play as being echo gifted and the like but with 5.3, it does bring up the question if our characters can be WoL without it being frowned upon and that SE just hasn't done/said anything in terms of the story or out of it (in interviews or fanfest) that our characters and those we meet are also the WoL/WoD.

Another thing that I had been thinking of was the fact that a lot of people subscribe to the 'only the Hyur in the trailers is the true WoL'. However, I do wonder if he is just meant to be the placeholder/stand in for our own PC characters.