Ivalice may not continue

[Theodric]

It always felt to me the vast majority of Garlemald is treated with certain disdain. As if it's a "necessary plot device" they borrowed from the 1.X lore they hate so much. Which is why we're not even getting a proper wrap-up by actually going there to finish what we started. Instead they just have it implode off-screen...

I get the same impression to an extent, though I do not think it is intentional so much as a grim realisation from the development team that no matter what they do with Garlemald there's a sizeable portion of unhinged FFXIV players who spend a significant amount of time and energy attacking anyone who likes Garlemald on Twitter, Reddit and this site's very own lore forum.

More than once I've seen a simple compliment of Varis, Gaius or Regula turn into accusations of supporting 'fascism', 'genocide' and 'murder'. I've even had death threats sent my way over it from time to time.

It isn't so much the case that Garlemald is unpopular, though. It has a lot of fans - though many of them are less vocal due to the above reasoning. When I role-played on Balmung, I encountered roughly a hundred different Garlean characters in either direct contact or passing.

To a similar degree, you see the same questionable attacks aimed at players who voice a fondness for the Ascians, especially Emet-Selch.

Ultimately, Yoshi-P claims to be a huge fan of the Ivalice games. Though I'd be lying if I said I was disappointed that the fondness apparently didn't extent to the point of making FFXIV's Empire go in a similar direction to FFXII's Empire. I always thought that game handled the 'Empire' trope exceptionally well, since it didn't destroy it - it reformed it.

I'm willing to wait and see what FFXIV does when it has a completely clean slate to work with, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't already eyeing some of the upcoming MMO's as potential options to hop over to if they're good. Pretty much everything I liked about the game's lore is due to wrap up with 6.0 and the push to have every in-game nation and race conform to the same set of ideals makes for a rather dull and predictable low stakes story in my opinion.

For example, I really want to explore more of Hingashi but I don't want to see the Hingans lectured for daring to keep 'Ijin' at bay. So far, pretty much every nation we have visited has effectively been defanged and any grit eroded away almost completely.

Ishgard and Ala Mhigo included.