Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
I think it is possible to enjoy an expansion in isolation if the premise itself is intriguing enough. Despite my misgivings towards large swathes of World of Warcraft's story beats over the years, I still managed to enjoy Legion in its own isolated bubble.
Thinking cos I read in a different thread about how the Scions are essentially a hivemind of yes-men, who all have perfect unison in goal and purpose

And then I remembered the Tomb of Sargeras ending. At the end of Tomb, Illidan opens a portal back to Azeroth so you can all escape, but contrary to what Khadgar's expecting, the portal keeps expanding, ripping a hole in reality such that travelling directly to the enemy homeworld is possible (meaning we're super likely for THEM to directly attack US). This is part of Illidan's plan, to make an ingress on the enemy home base and stem the tide there, putting us on the offensive for the first time in the war, while Khadgar's only able to see the 'risk to ourselves' side, exclaiming 'What...have you done!?' as he thinks the Legion's gonna be able to easily overrun Azeroth now they can get there even more directly (instead of all that mucking about in the Twisting Nether). The two characters want the same thing (stop the Legion, protect Azeroth), but they clearly have different thinking about how to do it, to the point where one isn't even filling the other in on the plan until it's executed

Additionally, the classic 'Rejection of the Gift' cinematic, where Illidan is getting forcibly converted to be Light-themed, and tells Xe'ra the Naaru that he's gonna keep using Dark mode, blowing it up. Turalyon, devoted Paladin and servant of the Light, clearly not happy with the fact that a Naaru got EyeBeam'd. Illidan and Turalyon both fight to stop the Legion, but this cinematic shows several things: The two have clearly different opinions on 'how' to stop the Legion, the Light is not a benevolent force and is in fact extremely controlling, and Illidan is apparently able to catch Light infused sword blades with his bare hands, despite being partially demon?

Anyway, it'd be nice if in FFXIV we had more... not conflict per se, but disagreement on method. HW is a good example, Ysayle and Estinien both wanted the war to end, they just had two different ways of reaching that goal. Fordola and Lyse wanted 'what was good' for Ala Mhigans, but one thought it was by winning back freedom, and one thought the casualties the war for freedom would cause was not worth the reward. These are good dynamics. Y'Shtola telling us 'we need to do X' and everyone just nodding like 'yep she's the clever one so lets do that' is getting a little tiresome. At least have Urianger chime in and say 'there's a risk that it will backfire, but I will trust in your judgement' to show he has some doubts about the efficacy of the solution