Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[Reynhart]

FFXI does not gate content behind its story.

Not true for most zones in CoP, nor Dynamis, nor Dreamworld, nor Sky, nor Sea, nor Salvage, nor Limbus...so, lots of raids, in fact.

New players are important. But, when your new players would rather skip your content than play it, that says something about the quality of player joining your game as well as the quality of your content.

The fun part is that those who claim that gating is a problem are not new players. The only complain I saw from new players is having to level a job to 50 (or even 60) to even unlock the one job they want to play. And that is a valid concern. Especially since, like in HW, jobs have acually very little connection to the city you unlock them.
They could have put AST, DRK and MCH out of Ishgard without any real issue.