Please stop asking SE to make FFXIV more easy!

[RiceisNice]

...

Each raiding instance is not tied to each other by story. In vanilla, you had to do raids in order to get gear because there was no justice points (tomestones) at the tome. If you wanted to get geared for Naxxramas (highest tier of raid at vanillia), you needed to get gear from AQ40. If you wanted to do AQ40, you needed to get gear from BWL. If you wanted to do BWL, you must get an item from Onyxia so you don't die to shadowflames and get gear from MC. If you wanted to do MC and onyxia, you needed to do a very long questline that involved clearing UBRS. In order to do UBRS.... you see where I'm going. I'm not even done yet and thats how "catching up to raids" worked in vanillia. If you were not one of the first few players, you were incredibly hard pressed to even find a guild that'll carry you through. There was no dungeon match making or party finder either, you had to shout in cities to get people for dungeons (and hope someone had the key for it).

The story for each raid was there for people that were interested. AT the same time, there was no pre-requites at the time to be able to enter said instances, and there was certainly no content gating that required players to finish the previous tier to move in. Catching up is similiar to how it is now, there are justice/valor points (soldiery/poetics respectively) that can be used to purchase the previous tier and the current tier of gear, with heroic raid drops being the absolute highest ilvl.

Raiding content as of MoP (when I still played), was (in order of increasing difficulty and item level) LFR -> Flexibile > Normal > Heroic.

LFR was pretty much duty finder for 25 players; mechanics were extremely nerfed so people would be able to PUG it reasonsaby (think the second coil nerfs). If you stand in a fire, you take slight damage.

Flexible was for people who had variable player roster. You could move in with a minimum of 10 and a maximium of 25, or anything inbetween. The raid itself would scale its number appriporiately. Mechanics are left intact as if it was in normal mode, but ilvl is lower. If you stand in a fire, you take damage that people need to heal through.

Normal was available in both 10/25 man. Essentially the same as flexible except the numbers are toned up. More loot drops in 25man. If you stand in a fire, you die.

Heroic was also available in both 10/25 man, and would be the equivalent of savage or normal FCoB in some cases. If you stand in a fire, you combust and kill your entire raid.

At that point, there was something for everyone. My problem with MoP was that they introduced a lot of the dailies too soon and I ended up burning out myself (that, and having no on to play with)