The lore in this game is just bad.

[Enkidoh]

Ironically enough, the lore as it stands at the moment in ARR is far more fleshed out and developed than what it was like right at the start of 1.0 service, or even after six months.

At that stage, there was virtually, nothing explained about the world you were in. Something about the Echo and how ten years earlier a place called Ala Mhigo had been invaded by an evil empire called Garlemald in the north east and how adventurers were basically unemployed soldiers given odd-jobs to keep them occupied, and some basic window dressing about the three cities you start in. But that was it.

I remember when I first started in 1.0, Gridania was my starting city, and as I did the first few story quests (because at that stage there wasn't even sidequests available), I couldn't figure out for the life of me just exactly what Gridania's society was supposed to be. A forest commune of tree-hugging hippy mages, archers and xenophobic stuck-up pikemen?

It was only until after Yoshi took over as Producer and Director, and successive patches finally started the world-building that should have been there from the start did things improve considerably. And ARR is only continuing that.

And once the 1.0 forums were added and certain members here started debating and arguing plot details did the questions finally start getting, um, answers. Especially when the Lore section was added and a certain ahriman loremaster start clarifying things here. So yeah, thanks to people like Catapult, Moose, Ferne and others I can't remember, did the game's lore finally start making sense (although certain ideas and theories in 1.0 have since been completely blown out of the water by revelations in ARR, and I love it!).

So yes, the original poster's statement that FFXIV's lore is 'bad' is quite simply, subjective.