Originally Posted by
rsod
To be honest, in my opinion real gameplay begins with level 80. In my opinion in MMO game story should be nice optional addition rather than a chore that locks you out of actual content. It's not a single player game, it's MMO. You come here, you want to do raids with friends, you want to farm your gear, glamour, mounts, that's what mmo is more about. FFXIV is really first MMO that I encounter that forces you to play it's story or pay 20 euro to get into actual content immediately.
When I first was invited to the game by a friend, I did around 20 levels of MSQ and I just refused to play further. Would it be not a skip that they gifted me, I'd not play the game at all. I'm pretty happy with the game as a right now: I'm farming raids, mounts, trials, doing fun stuff with friends and have zero regrets that I never did the story. Though to be honest: I would like to. But I can not tolerate choreful text reading with majority of cutscenes not voiced at all.
At least, like all other MMO do, it would be nice if a story skip book + class boost book would be included into full game purchase, as it is in literally every other game.