Friends of mine, new to the game, becoming discouraged by STORY QUESTS

[SDaemon]

While I suppose that's possible, I certainly hope they don't. It would totally spoil the story for anyone who doesn't have HW yet at that point, but might want to play it at some later point down the road. It's better to just branch off and keep the two separate.

I've never heard of any game that required purchase of past expansions before you could play the latest one, and I really can't imagine that happening here. Designed for post HW levels and gear, certainly, which would be plenty to make playing HW first the preferable way to get there. (Anyone who skips HW would have a lot of level grinding to do in place of it.) But they can't very well require HW unless they switch to giving it away for free, and I can't see them giving up the revenue on it.

I would imagine the cutscene would be only for those wishing to skip the story regardless and would be an in-game selection not something imposed like an opening cutscene.

Also I honestly can't imagine them just letting people buy 4.0 and leveling from 50 to the new cap from that without needing to have purchased HW to be able to reach 60 first. It makes sense that they would require you to purchase HW and then the 2nd expansion. They already offer both ARR and HW in a bundle that can be purchased together.

I don't think the devs said that they would require 3.0 to get access to 4.0.

They won't require 3.0's main story to be completed is the only word I've ever seen on the matter. I'm positive they will still require you to have HW on your account as Heavensward is required to reach level 60 and 4.0 is likely to increase the level cap from 60 onward and be designed with that increase in mind.