Really hope this was just a simple musing and will never be implemented in game. It's a terrible idea, and I hope enough people are voicing that so it gets heard.
On the topic of gating things behind expansions, I'm honestly not opposed to how Heavensward did it. If you throw open access to new expansion content to new players, then old content is going to be left in the dust, and people who didn't purchase the expansion are going to be underwhelmed and leave.
A lot of people are citing XI as "the right way to do it", but seriously, the same complaints existed back then. When CoP launched, one of the big arguments was that you had to be mid-level to enjoy the new content. ToAU really didn't offer you anything if you were sub-50s either. And considering what leveling was like in XI, it's probably easier to get to Lv. 50 in XIV than it was to get to Lv. 30 in XI (especially if you were a DPS).
