I really don't understand how you can feel it's okay to force someone to play a third of the game as something they may not want and may not even like before they can get to what they want. This is a game. It should be encouraging fun.
We like leveling. For me, leveling is 80% of what I do in an MMO; I tend to have a large number of alts that I will play to cap but very rarely engage with them seriously (except for one that I "main") once they hit level cap. Starting at 50 also means you have to slog through the annoying ARR MSQ before you can touch it, which was ridiculous with HW (and they even ACKNOWLEDGED that the HW jobs being locked behind ARR was a mistake) and is ridiculous now.
Where has this been mentioned at all?