The content between the end of ARR and Heavensward is not very good.

[Shurq]

I slogged thru it. Took me near on a week from the moment I hit 50 'til the moment I opened the gates to Ishgard. Story had its moments but i kept wishing I could just waltz into the new areas at level and pickup the main storyline from there like in pretty much every other MMO on the market.

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

[Hestzhyen]

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

Well the HW post-60 quests are not as long and meandering as the ARR quests- they still deliver on the quality story without taking up too much of your time with "but what could this MEAN? Go run to that person 10 yalms away and ask for me, would ya?". It's much more compact and focused. There's a good bit of it and some cut scenes are very long but it's nowhere near the Primal of the Week era of ARR in terms of padding. You'll have reasons to get sent into the duties you do beyond "oh crap someone tripped and woke up a primal WoL deal with it pls".

SE knows that the ARR experience is lacking, both for new players who just want to get to the fun parts and for vets who can't stand being sent on silly missions to play verbal messanger or kill 10 boars and bring back their butts. They've been trying to rectify this ever since with new stuff but there's no practical way for them to go back and re-do all the old stuff while still making new content for us to play every 3 months.

[Frizze]

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

This is a case where the devs heard the people complaining and took it to heart. The 2.x series was an even 100 quests, a quick count shows the 3.x series to be 44. That includes 4 or 5 solo instances(1 or 2 of which people complained at the time were hard), 4 dungeons and 1 trial. Theres a bit of meandering about and "what does it all mean" as you might expect in an RPG, but overall it does a good job of staying focused and setting up the next steps that need to be taken and there are a few absolutely epic moments in that stretch. The other big thing they learned was not to gate EVERYTHING behind the MSQ. You couldnt play a DRK/MCH/AST until you got into ishgard because thats where the trainers were. The new job trainers for SB are in Ul Dah so you can get an earlier start on those classes if you so choose.