Quote Originally Posted by bungiefanNA View Post
The old expansions were eased to be able to do them with smaller groups or solo because SE looked at the census data and saw that most of the player base had not completed the missions. Having gates like this tied to storyline makes more people complete the storyline. The changes they have been doing have been trying to get more people to complete such content in the game, by having a carrot at the end of it. They've had a lot of content since WotG, and not a lot of people completing it. That's been changing since Abyssea, Level Sync, and removal of level capped areas.
They need to do more though even still. I went today to do more Aht Urhgan missions, and once again, I cannot continue because "wait until after Japanese midnight." This time gated content is so annoying.

After looking ahead the next few missions, it looks like it's going to happen again, twice. I imagine past that it will happen even more too....