Brevity is the soul of wit: Request to fix the horrible writing on XIV's quests

[Altanas]

the npc's in 11 did not need to infodump because
a) they hint at the lore
b) there are landmarks to backup those hints

whereas in 14, there are no real landmarks so all the lore is infodumped. For example, the elvaan dude in the OP should not have had to introduce his Circle. There should have been a landmark or a Tome in a library somewhere where the player could have found out about the Circle and its members then the players would have been in awe at the elvaan dude when the update hit. Contrast this to 11 where players felt npc's like King Ranperre were badass even though he had no physical presence in the game. Basically, SE missed out on opportunities to hype up the major npcs.

another tidbit, a lot of the lore in 11 goes unexplained, no one knows definitely who the remaining statues in Hall of the Gods trully represent. in 14 everything is done to death.

the players appreciate the finite resources the devs have to work with, but "show dont tell" is a basic writers concept and can be pseudo-achieved by removing the speech infodumps and placing them throughout the world in other ways (eg Tomes/books). For example, ElderScrolls excels at this.