Appears more likely than not that new Stormblood areas gated by 3.5 Completion

[dragonseth07]

Why would new players want to skip all the old content? It is not like the new content is better than the old, and for a new player it is all new to them anyway.

Clearly, you've never joined an MMO multiple expacs deep. At some point, it gets boring going through a ghost town MMO while you wait to hit the content people are playing.