People talk about the crafting part of the quest as if it was absolutely impossible for a player to level up a crafter to craft the items. It's not, and you can do it very fast if you're willing to do it. You can't have all specialists, but that's true for everyone and a lot of people are willing to trade. I saw a crafter on PF today in my server and he was asking to trade crafted items with other crafter to complete his relic. Not hard at all. If a player is not willing to do that, just do what you're supposed to do in a game like FF XIV: make friends, join linkshells and a free company. Done. There are several players that are willing to craft those items for a reasonable price if you provide the mats. Leveling up a gatherer to 60 doesn't take longer than a week. Yes, a week. I've done it myself. So any casual player should be able to do it to gather whatever is needed for the relic, and to be honest the items are not high tier and shouldn't require any melded gear. You can do it with Red Scrips, which are fairly easy to get.
The relic is not supposed to be given for free and it should require work. It will only take longer than a month to casually grind it (hardcores can do all the steps in a week, since the Alexander grind part is as fast as light farming with an average PF group), so there's absolutely no reason to complain. And yes, SE should make players do old content, otherwise new players won't have anyone to do content with. Try playing WoW or FF XI (and yes, I'll compare) and you'll see what I mean. In FF XI, you basically won't stumble on any players in the starter areas and playing it can feel very lonely. I started meeting people in FF XI when I managed to get to Jeuno, and that was it. There was no one to play with, because all the areas suited to a starting player don't give anything good to a veteran player. I depended on Trust NPCs to level up.
Unless the developers force us to play with new people, most of us won't and their experience will be crap. You guys think that this grind will drag people away from the game, but it's quite the opposite: it prevents people from buying FF XIV and then quitting after their first month expires. If an easy grind like this one is scaring you guys, I can't imagine how you would play old school games like Ragnarok Online. You'd give up in a week.