A serious discussion about abridging the story quest 1-50 (discouraging new players)

[Zabuza]

What WoW did was stop listening to its player base and started implementing thing that "they" thought were good ideas even thought the player base was screaming no they still did it.
Which is also why the majority of the development teams from bc and wrath no longer work for blizzard any more and are working for Riot games.

Listening too much to the people always turns out bad for MMO developers, because satisfying the complainers is nearly impossible. Just look at the people complaining about the way the loot system is now on Alexander. This is after people complained about the way Coil loot worked in the past. You also have people complaining story mode Alexander is too easy, whereas before people would complain about how hard Coil was. Complainers are impossible to satisfy because:

1. You may satisfy one group of complainers, only to cause unrest to a group of people who wanted it done the exact opposite way.
2. A lot of people who play the MMO genre don't even know what they want out of an MMO. For years people whined "why isn't there any innovation anymore in MMOs? Why are they all WoW clones?" Then, when innovative MMOs came out people ran from them, as they didn't like how different it was from WoW. The reason this game is as successful as it is, is because a lot of their basic design decisions copied WoW, except they made some of the features better and more polished. This is exactly what WoW did when it started, copying off of other MMOs yet making them more polished. So if the devs made the story completely optional, you'd have people complaining they don't care about the lore, and there is a lack of content to do as they blew through it. People are ALREADY doing that.

People complaining about the Alexander loot system:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-systems-sucks
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...er-loot-system

Post complaining about story mode Alexander being too easy:
(possible spoilers)http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...sible-spoilers

A thread clamoring for a story mode of Coil before Alexander came out, protesting players could not enjoy Coil's story because of the difficulty:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-mode-isn-t-it

I guarantee you at this point if they made the entirety of MSQ optional you would see just as much activity on the forums, if not more, of people complaining about such a decision and feeling disheartened by it.