What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lauront]

I agree with everything except the bit about the ancients. Any justification for a race getting wiped out that tries to frame it as the “correct” option, even if it involves writing them down to being completely evil strawmen, will always be diabolical to me. Pro-genocide narratives are bad no matter what, and that’s why this thread has so many pages.

We all thought the sundering was an accident, or that Hydaelyn was simply not good. There’s really no good way to portray her as good if the sundering was purposeful. A “better” setup of the ancients as a race that “needed” to die wouldn’t fix that, and would’ve made the writers even more reprehensible in my eyes.

Agreed. I was ironically relieved by how poor a job they did of trying to justify the Sundering and extermination of all those other civilisations as an attempt to prop up the sundered... or at least what appeared to be the message they were going with before the Omega quests clarified matters a bit. This particular approach would be a red line for me if fully embraced, especially after SHB.