Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[NiceNox]

Fire the writer, he has never written anything good.
Fire the consultants who wanted to avoid white savior, colonizer aspects and are the main reason we aren't allowed to do shit.

Funny, the whole argument of avoiding the white savior/intervention/colonizer aspects falls quite quickly when you realize that we are playing the role of CIA agents intervening in local election.

[Malthir]

Before people start baying for blood. Let's all take a beat. To clarify I'm all aboard the Wuk sucks train, I hated this expac and It's literally made me unable to play/enjoy any part of the game anymore. My game time runs out in like 2 or 3 days and I wont be back again. I never know when they will just shoehorn Wuk into my face again and I just can't take anymore of her so I just don't want to do the role quest or side content incase she gets shoved into that too.

That being said, writing is very hard. especially when you don't have anything to rely on as backstory. What they created is not without it's merits, the principle of the story and the world of the continent was fine, just the implementation is bad, pacing is bad, dragging the first act along waaaay to long was bad, resolving all the plot threads was bad, and merging wuk into everything was a mistake imo. Lot's of people make mistakes, so before you start crying out for people to lose their jobs. Just think for a second, the expac was not a complete pile of dogshit without merit and narratively could have been much much worse. The main reason I think alot of us are so angry, is because it was 30 hours of cutscenes with almost zero gameplay, you have to do it to be able to do other content, so we all feel like we were held hostage and forced along. I get it, but let's not try and ruin someone's life cause they did something poorly one time.

[Ruris]

I'm going to be sick...

The scene after she succeeds with Koana coming into your ream reads like a bad fanfic where Self Insert OC Do Not Steal has their brother check on the actual canonical MC to confirm feelings of closeness. I mean the line is literally "You have become someone irreplaceable to her. As her brother, I acknowledge that with no little jealousy"

That reads like a child wrote it about their OC falling in love with Harry Potter, or WoL in this case, and it's actually gross and I want to scrub myself down to the BONE after feeling that absolute excrement poured onto me as the player. Absolutely vile... I wouldn't even want a replacement for her. I'd rather she go and leave me healthier for it, the cancerous lump she has turned out to be.

I'm not normally this harsh but damn that was bad

I just ran through this bit of the story and the same flashing lights were interupting my brain from actually consuming this scene the way the writer hoped I would. I love romance angles to stories at the best and worst of times and this scene would have been perfectly acceptable had Wuk Lamat had any ground to stand on to have earned this. Up until this point, the story has done a fantastic job of shoving Wuk Lamat down my throat with no prep, no consent, no warning. Just, accept this and like this. It's the natural order of things.

Don't get me started on being asked to call her Llama Tea. I just answered with "..." and Krile continues the Dawntrail gaslighting in claiming I am simply caught off guard with the request and of course we would all be honoured to be considered Eorzean cousins. If I was isekai'd right now, with my WoL just entering the new zone with Erenville, I would jump at the opportunity to lose the entire gang, find Estinen and make my way back to Eorzea and hopefully sleep the whole thing off.

[FlowerMilk]

This expansion it was announced that Ishikawa took on more of a "manager" role, but from the writing/story we got I don't see her voice present anywhere. The Scions don't even feel like the same Scions that she gave us in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, it feels like we traveled back in time to the Scions of ARR. I don't know how much of a say she had over the story as "manager" or what that process looks like, but it's clear to me that she either needs to be more assertive about the direction of the story, or she needs to find someone who agrees with her overall vision for the story to be in charge of the direction of the story, because whoever was in charge in Dawntrail just wasn't it. It's like night and day compared to previous expansion story, and it's extremely clear that you can tell it was written by someone else.

I started playing after Endwalker came out, so I played through the entire game's story from start to Endwalker, and it felt like the characters developed well over time, especially in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. So it felt very jarring for those characters to suddenly have all the development taken away and it felt like they lost all of their distinct personalities for a character (Wuk Lamat) who wasn't as well written/developed as the Scions in previous expansions. If Ishikawa was present in the story and making sure the Scions were also still present with their distinct personalities that we have got to know over time, I don't think Wuk Lamat's grating personality would have been as awful. But it's like she was an energy vacuum that sucked all of Scion's personalities out of the room and it's like I wasn't allowed to just enjoy a new story and getting to know a new character with these characters that I already know and loved because they didn't even feel like the same Scions anymore.

[Xendros]

I just ran through this bit of the story and the same flashing lights were interupting my brain from actually consuming this scene the way the writer hoped I would. I love romance angles to stories at the best and worst of times and this scene would have been perfectly acceptable had Wuk Lamat had any ground to stand on to have earned this. Up until this point, the story has done a fantastic job of shoving Wuk Lamat down my throat with no prep, no consent, no warning. Just, accept this and like this. It's the natural order of things.

Don't get me started on being asked to call her Llama Tea. I just answered with "..." and Krile continues the Dawntrail gaslighting in claiming I am simply caught off guard with the request and of course we would all be honoured to be considered Eorzean cousins. If I was isekai'd right now, with my WoL just entering the new zone with Erenville, I would jump at the opportunity to lose the entire gang, find Estinen and make my way back to Eorzea and hopefully sleep the whole thing off.

That's exactly what my WoL did as soon as Act 1 was completed. She strolled out to the jungle and vanished forever. The only sign of her passing was the faint sound of teleportation magic. For the first time since ARR closed beta, I have no desire to play another minute of the MSQ.

[Zaniel]

That's exactly what my WoL did as soon as Act 1 was completed. She strolled out to the jungle and vanished forever. The only sign of her passing was the faint sound of teleportation magic. For the first time since ARR closed beta, I have no desire to play another minute of the MSQ.

I have always played my WoL as the kindest option possible, always picking the speech option that will uplift whoever I am talking to, I never snark. For the first time since I rode that carriage into Ul'dah I am "revenge selecting" by taking the most snarky reply option possible in all my optional speech moments. It's my small fist wave of fighting back against the MSQ.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

That's exactly what my WoL did as soon as Act 1 was completed. She strolled out to the jungle and vanished forever. The only sign of her passing was the faint sound of teleportation magic. For the first time since ARR closed beta, I have no desire to play another minute of the MSQ.

What kept me going was the assurance that after 97 it got way better. It doesn't...you made the right choice.

[Cotytto]

First time posting on the forums. I just had to after this disaster of an xpac. Even though I despised the post EW patches I didn't feel the need to post my grievances. But this horrible MSQ and the infuriating Wok LeRug was just too much for me to bear in silence. Everything I feel though has already been stated by others so I'll not pull the same stunt as the MSQ writers and repeat them ad nauseum.

I can only hope that the post patches do not include that flea bitten creature unless we get to kill her off. You know have her do a 180 out of nowhere (like so many other characters do in this MSQ) due to some offscreen BS (maybe she gets spit on by an alpaca primal?) and goes full evil so we... regrettably... *snicker*... have to put her down.

Humanely of course. Wouldn't want to draw that out. Like leave her at 1% awhile until we had to finish her.

Knowing the current writers though they'd probably have an alpaca come in at 10% and do it for us, thus stealing even that tiny bit of catharsis cause "lol so random!".

[Lunaxia]

Much as I am a member of the Church of Yoshi-P we have to acknowledge this rubbish got OK'd by their senior producers. I mean what happened there, didn't the senior people sit down and read the script/play the alphas, was there no "uhhh this isn't quite working" moment? How did this get greenlit? I have no answers.

I'm not defending Yoshida here, especially after the past two years, but I do wonder how far his influence goes in scenarios like these. I remember him saying he was surprised by Y'shtola's "froth and foam" bit back then and actually mentioned he felt like it might have been a step too far for her character, or words to that effect (Google is failing me.) Other comments by him also seem to indicate that while he has a general say in what goes and offers some input along the way, it's pretty much left to the writers until the later stages, and even then, there are some battles he loses if there's any disagreement. Ishikawa literally had the power to do a near rewrite of EW's plot at almost the last minute when she found it underwhelming, so I think it's a mistake to assume his word is law or he unequivocally approves of every writing decision the team makes.

I think the issue is whatever's driving this bizarre new direction they've taken with the game's tone that's been brewing for a while, and the fact they've largely handed things over to new writers this time around.

[jumps004]

I found this thread by googling my disdain for Wuk Lamat. I am around the level 99 range, half way through the last zone and I am struggling to even want to pick up the next quest in what is other wise a fantastic zone knowing that the character of Wuk Lamat will interject themselves into every. single. conversation. They will come up with all the plans, they will be the one to perform the large zone actions, everyone will call her Lamaty'i and shower her with praise. I get tired of them showering my own character with praise at this point too. Why is every quest objective after speaking with 3 random npcs always falling back to "speak to Wuk Lamat"

I hope this expansion tells the devs how much having an ensemble cast helped their previous expansions and relying on one Writer's Pet character for 4x the lines of everyone else is a terrible decision. Krile and Erenville deserved so much better.