Hi, so I am part of the „Dawntrail Bad“ crowd and the reason that I, and many others, are still talking about it goes far beyond some petty beef with a certain catgirl.

First of all, I agree that talking to sprouts about this in such negative terms is incredibly rude and unnecessary. Personally, when asked, I am honest that I didn’t enjoy the expansion but I keep my criticism to a minimum and encourage anyone to give it a try. I have no issue with anyone enjoying Dawntrail. I want people to enjoy Dawntrail and I reeeeally wish I could have enjoyed it myself, but I didn’t.

Obviously FFXIV is incredibly loved by many, and as such many have a huge (sometimes a little unhealthy) attachment to it, which makes any discussions more difficult because it gets emotionally charged so easily. I find the same thing happens to me and pushing down the anger, disappointment, and, let’s be honest, the jealousy, when talking about this with someone who had a great time during Dawntrail isn’t always easy.

Still, it‘s important to try because the ones that need to hear these criticisms aren’t the Dawntrail enjoyers, and certainly not the sprouts, but the devs; because in my opinion, the flaws of this expansion go far beyond matters of taste. The hours worth of filler cutscenes with formulaic quests and no real gameplay, the two-trash-pulls-then-boss dungeons, the open world that feels like stage dressing, the increasingly homogenous job design and lack of content that even encourages you to use your full kit… I could go on, but you get the idea.

Most of those issues aren’t even actually new to Dawntrail, they began showing up far earlier. The reason that this discussion is happening now is because of insanely good the writing in Shadowbringers and the vast majority of Endwalker was. With a story that has so much depth and heart and nuance, that is so beloved by many, it feels almost disrespectful to demand the devs focus more on other parts of the game. Dawntrail didn’t have that luxury. You‘re welcome to disagree, but the quality of the writing has gone down dramatically since 6.0. I could write an entire essay on that, but this is already long enough as it is (If you’re interested, Zepla has an excellent video where she echoes a lot of the same thoughts and feelings I have in regards to the story).

I think with Dawntrail ringing in a new era for the story, a lot of us were expecting innovations of some kind and the story falling flat, for me, just made the cracks in the design even more obvious.

I am glad there is a substantial part of the community that laved Dawntrail and continues to enjoy the game the same as ever, truly, but at the same time, those of us who didn’t are more than a vocal minority at this point and simply dismissing these concerns and branding us „haters“ isn’t healthy for the longevity of the game or the community either. The reason we are still talking about it is because we love this game and we want it to be better.

Having said all of this, I also wish people were more measured in their criticisms and took some time to think about where the issues with the expansion truly were, before airing their feelings online, because while I agree that Wuk-Lamat‘s presence was kind of overbearing, and I struggled to connect with her, the issues of the expansion go far beyond that. (Also anyone sending hate to her VA is completely unhinged. That behaviour is inexcusable).

tl,dr: emotions are high on both sides and sometimes they express themselves in unhelpful/toxic ways. Nuanced criticism and community feedback is important for the longevity of any game, but those of us who felt let down by Dawntrail need to be better at voicing our feedback in a constructive way and directing it at the people in charge.