Possible level/story jumps....really?

[Dualblade]

To be fair, most MMO xpacs don't require you to beat the story of the base game/previous xpac to access as far as I remember. Not even XI outside of maybe needing to beat the initial story for whatever city you started in (Never played XI so not honestly sure.)

Personally I'd like to keep having to DO the story kept in to access the next xpacs story, but have certain ways to get into the new zone that don't require the story. Like Crafters/Gathers level 50 quest could give them access to Ishgard. Like Miner leads to this well enough on its on as you are a contractor from the Miner's Guild working in Ishgard. No mention at all of how you normally get there, don't even need it.

[Black_Wing]

To be fair, most MMO xpacs don't require you to beat the story of the base game/previous xpac to access as far as I remember. Not even XI outside of maybe needing to beat the initial story for whatever city you started in (Never played XI so not honestly sure.)

Personally I'd like to keep having to DO the story kept in to access the next xpacs story, but have certain ways to get into the new zone that don't require the story. Like Crafters/Gathers level 50 quest could give them access to Ishgard. Like Miner leads to this well enough on its on as you are a contractor from the Miner's Guild working in Ishgard. No mention at all of how you normally get there, don't even need it.

Areas in each XI expansion are accessible from the outset of release with a few exceptions (Dynamis for example). With the exception of Rise of the Zilart, you can start any of the expansions stories as long as you met the level requirement. Rise of the Zilart requires you to have cleared City Mission 5-2 (aka Shadowlord) to trigger the intro cutscene of the expansion to start it. But yeah, all cities/jobs are accessible as long as you have the expansions installed/registered and met the level requirement(which is having a base job(warrior, monk, white mage, black mage, red mage, thief) at level 30 for access to the advanced jobs).

[Dualblade]

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Both of you get likes for the info.

Also I agree with Enkidoh, the ultimate reason why most people wanted to skip straight to Ishgard was for the new jobs. If new jobs aren't gated behind a new xpac city that isn't readily accessible then the request for jumping straight into it will die down a bit.

Though if new jobs continue to start at lvl 30/any level beyond 50 there should be some form of gating. Mostly just having atleast one other job up to its level should be enough, or putting it in, say, Mor Dhona.

[Yasminou]

To be fair, most MMO xpacs don't require you to beat the story of the base game/previous xpac to access as far as I remember. Not even XI outside of maybe needing to beat the initial story for whatever city you started in (Never played XI so not honestly sure.)

In FFXI, the story was given when going through Missions. In the original game, the missions were separated by Nations and you could go from Mission 1.1 until Mission 5.2, where you fought the Big Bad Guy. Although the Missions were separated by Nations, Missions 3.3, 4, 5.1 and 5.2 (so, the end of the original game) were the same whatever your Nation was. You could even do the battles with people from another Nation.
The first expansion pack, Rise of the Zilart, brought two types of missions all requiring to have beaten 5.2: Nations Missions 6.1 until 9.2 (those were different depending on the Nation) and Zilart Missions.
We could also change our nation and go through the story of every nation.

However, the next expansion packs brought new Missions, independant (completion-wise) from the Nations and the Zilart Missions, which could be started whenever one wants. That does not mean that all these new stories were not related to the previous ones though.