Why punish players who just want to play DoL DoH?

[Adire]

Except that would require SE to write a completely separate story for what is a small minority of the player base, which would take time and resources away from other parts of the game.

They have one story, and everyone, old or new, needs to complete that story to access the new areas. It's the most efficient and inclusive way of doing things.

What makes people who want to do DoH/DoL stuff rather than combat less important than anyone else? Gating the content in the first place was not very efficient or inclusive, and gating it behind a ton of combat quests was not fair to people.

Besides, it could be as simple a feature as making a GC-like representative with "Ishgardian seals" or something. You have a daily cap of seals you can get, you get a lot of them from turning in hard to craft items (similar to Ixal quest items maybe, but with much harder difficulty) or a few of them from turning in easier things to craft. Trade in enough seals, you get access to Ishgard for "helping the war effort against the Dravanians".

A new questline would be great, but there are simple alternatives too.