The lore in this game is just bad.

[Orophin]

I won't make assumptions, but if you read the side quest text closer this fills in some of the gaps concerning some of the dungeons.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

The Wanderer's Palace. Level 50 dungeon. It's all tonberries.

:O. how do i unlock it? main story?? ... must ... progress.. faster!
thanks for the info!

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

what do you know... it was built for oschon.... my chars deity is oschon.. is related to tonberries.. i think my mind was preparing me for this lol

[Ispen]

The lore in this game is fine as others have said you just have to look for it. Warcraft lore on the other hand was great until they released WoW then it just started steadily going downhill.

[Conradus]

:O. how do i unlock it? main story?? ... must ... progress.. faster!
thanks for the info!

It's not storyline, it's a sidequest in Vesper Bay (Trauma Queen). You just talk to the guy, he tells you to go talk to the guard at the Palace and boom, it's unlocked. You will need to be level 50 before the quest will be unlocked for you, however.

Additional: Some of the sources I'm looking this up on say you *do* have to be at a point in the storyline to unlock the unlock quest (which is definitely a side quest, not storyline). I didn't have to do so; this may be because I was a level 50 legacy character.

[Aesu]

Holy moly you are so wrong...

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Category:Bestiary << read this and you realise that they even went to the trouble of classifying all the mobs in the game.

Anyway, from reading quest text I know that the first people in Gridania lived in the underground city Gelmorra(?) and once they had permission from the Elementals to live in the forest without facing the Greenwrath they moved into the places we know today. And thats one area.

[shinros]

Well the black mage quest has interesting implications about the job and the void and if you read my theory topic on the paragons....

[Senzura]

Its final fantasy. No FF game ever had a focus on the surrounding lore, but rather the events of the main cast. That is what this game does.

[SnowyRed]

It would have been nice if the city-states were racial like in Final Fantasy XI. I really loved San d'Oria and would have liked to make my Elezen a citizen of a very European, Elezen society.

[Nialle]

The Lore is great. A lot of people's reading ability, not so much. =P

But it has always been the case, that those who think reading the quest text or talking to NPCs is dumb tend to have less idea of the lore of a game. That's just obvious. If you don't make the effort, you won't learn much about the world. It's kind of like real life in that respect. =P