Also the opinion that forums are havens for negativity seems like shaky logic. Forums, without any data, should be assumed to represent similar opinions to those if you generally polled an audience. There's nothing special about users who use forums and those who don't. There's no official data that you're of a certain pre disposition or IQ level or something if you use the forums. Forums are probably an assortment of a few thousand players that would be the same if you took a few thousand Randoms from Aether sever.
They are - for a simple reason that has been documented: the internet tends to encourage negativity. It's not a question of intelligence or anything like that: it's more a question of environment, and the fact that our brains are made to react to negative stimuli in a more violent way. The ffxiv forum is not alone. I have... mixed memories of the wow forums, where legitimate criticism often went hand in hand with personal tirades that went off in all directions. Add to that the fact that some people stop coming at all because of the negativity around them - and you automatically filter out all the optimists.

Saying that a forum is representative of a population is like saying that an IRL social venue is. It won't be true, because access to that social space is determined by a set of criteria (social, economic, cultural) that establish an initial filter.

Having said that, I'm looking forward to DT. I'd like to take this opportunity (and this is more of a request for confirmation than anything else, I have a doubt): are we really going back to a narrative cycle like the one we had between ARR and Endwalker? Not a stand-alone expansion?