Like someone else pointed out earlier, the way they're numbering these patches, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. makes it seem they're trying to tell a huge story split into chapters, with each expansion being an extension into the next chapter instead of a stand-alone expansion that could tie together events that happen across the world but not necessarily dependent on each other. This offered more parallel things that still mattered. But with things in FFXIV, they couldn't get any more linear than what they have now.