What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[FoxyAreku]

Why does everyone seem to forget the entire 51 to 60 leveling process?
I mean, that was the core of the expansion, and the leveling phase is always the core of any expansion until the first major patch introduces a raid. It's like everyone forgot about the million quests and epic story they did for a week.

[Colorful]

Why does everyone seem to forget the entire 51 to 60 leveling process?
I mean, that was the core of the expansion, and the leveling phase is always the core of any expansion until the first major patch introduces a raid. It's like everyone forgot about the million quests and epic story they did for a week.

The story was amazing, I'll give you that. But the side quests? I found to be nothing more than a grind, I tried reading some instead of just skipping past them, but they never managed to get me hooked in. Having me travel back and forth without the ability to fly yet, again and again for what seems like no reason wasn't fun to me. Side quests can be done right, but does FFXIV do them right? No. If we're talking about the story specifically, I picked up the Witcher 3 for about $80 AUD, that's $2 more than the price of Heavensward + a month of subscription. The Witcher 3 gave me interesting combat, an incredibly interesting and well done story, with very little to no filler, side quests that kept me entertained and weren't just boring "find my art piece that I lost" type of quests, even one where I had to find a pan (or was it a pot?) in a house was interesting! That's how well done the "leveling experience" is in some single player games.

If an expansion's only good part is story, and that on its own is subpar that's a bad sign. An MMO has to keep you paying, it has to keep people subscribed and put out interesting and varied high-quality content, a lot of it too. FFXIV is currently not doing that, telling people to unsubscribe until the next expansion isn't a good idea unless you either want the game to die, or never release patches but expansions very few months instead.