So, the story

I really liked Coerthas. It's fun to go into a realm of religion fanatics and show them why their religion and zeal is ruining their own lives.

I enjoyed the story, mostly until north thanalan. And I loved coerthas, I'd change nation allegiance to Ishgard if I could to be a Dragoon in service to the Holy See.

I enjoyed the storyline much more than other MMOs I've played. The only thing that bugged me was the Ishgardians calling me a heretic when Halone is my guardian as well.

The story is good. I've enjoyed it (and that's all I can say without spoilers).

As for the Costa del Sol and Coerthas arcs, I think that you missed the whole point of both. In Costa del Sol, for example, they tell you exactly what you've said at the end of said arc: "why did you send me to collect stuff for a party while we have a primal right there waiting to destroy Eorzea". I suggest that you go to the inn and check that part again, as it's answered there. And Coerthas... well, ishgardians are special, you should know that already. A lot of them are just fanatics, and the rest are controlled by the fear they have towards the first (the Holy See and blahblahblah). You'll get to see the opinion of the rest of Eorzea about that, too.

Honestly? I liked it from about after the point you're complaining about.

Suddenly went from an endless, character-ruining stream of 'OMG Hail the conquering hero they're so special!' to a sense of being part of a setting. It's not perfect and I still wish the characters would quit sucking up to mine so much, but.. it definitely improved after the grand companies got involved; at least somewhat.

Problem is it's a lot harder to tell a good story when you need to have a shit ton of quests as well. Need tons of filler and that's what we got.

I agree with pretty much everything said by the OP. All of the storyline seems to have been thrown out the window and replaced with standard MMO fluff, and with extremely ridiculous excuses, no less. "Hey, it's cool that you want to save us all, but I don't trust you, so you better travel around the world and get me these McGuffins or else I'm not gonna do a thing for you. Who the hell cares if we all die". DFYGUYDKSGVBKDBVKFSDYGVBDFSV....

I expected filler, its an MMO so smart money was on meaningless fetch quests sometimes... I mean some of the fetch quests were unimaginative and grindy but personally, the story was fan-f**king-tastic otherwise. I really loved it. I mean, it really picks up about ... 5 seconds after the Garuda fight, and while you still gottta do a few dumb fetch quests, theres less and it helps.

I, personally, can't diss the story due to fetch quests, as far as I'm concerned, fetch quests aren't part of the story to me, its a Filler arc to an Anime so to speak, sh*ts there and its technically part of the seasons but its meaningless to the big picture, and in this case the big picture was epic.

A majority of it was disappointing because they wanted to use it as a leveling tool. Once that started to stop (43 onward) it got pretty good. Hopefully going forward it will not be that way with expansions.