I see a lot of complaints about Alexander's story, and I think its time I offered my two cents.

Let's start from the beginning: A Realm Reborn opened with a literal bang, with Bahamut and the Calamity. From the moment Bahamut appeared and rained destruction, there was the implied promise that the players would eventually face down the primal for themselves. This was the promise surrounding Binding Coil, that we would eventually get a piece of the dragon we saw in the End of an Era cinematic. And of course, it eventually delivered.

However, as we know, only a relatively small percentage of the population got that chance. For the rest of us, well, we were SoL. For a more casual player, that *bites*, since we never got to wrap up the loose ends from End of an Era, which for many newcomers (including myself) was their very first exposure to FFXIV. It's similar to how in World of Warcraft, only the raiding population got to face down the Big Bad until they released Looking for Raid. WoW gets away with this more easily thanks to it's more disjointed way of delivering the story. (As an aside note, one of my favorite things about FFXIV is how quests actually prompt you to enter DF to enter dungeons and trials. This allows the instances to be more smoothly integrated with the story in a way WoW's instances never are or will be.) FFXIV less so, partly because its much more lore-focused.

To drive home the point, FCoB got a full-fledged *CGI cutscene,* Flames of Truth, which was essentially the missing second half of End of an Era. You can imagine how some were upset they never got to see this proper once they found out.

With the casual players upset that they never got the chance to experience Binding Coil's story, this led to requests for a 'story mode' for the next raid. They didn't want to be burned like that again. Hence, we got Alex NM. The problem, unfortunately, is that Alexander lacks any sort of build-up during the MSQ. In 2.0, you're adventuring in the shadow of Bahamut and the Calamity it caused, the Seventh Umbral Era. Bahamut had been established as something we would be able to face long ago. Alexander wasn't even in the picture until after the 3.0 MSQ. In short, it meant Alex would naturally lack the 'epicness' that Binding Coil had the privilege of having thanks to End of an Era.

I'm taking Alex's story as it is, and it really isn't that bad when you aren't comparing it to Coil. But its lack of MSQ ties hurts it for players who were expecting something 'epic' like Coil again. End of an Era was a one-time thing. There was no way that was going to happen.