I already explained that several posts back. What ROLE PLAYING GAME isn't story driven?
There is absolutely no MMORPG on the market or that was on the market in the last 10 years that did not give you a reason for doing whatever it was you were doing.
There's lore behind the dungeon.
There's lore behind the raid bosses.
There's lore behind why you're killing that piglet looking creature.
And for PvP games there's lore behind why you're killing other players.
That's story/lore driven...the lore is driving you to do x, y, and z. It's up to you to read the quests or not. (If you don't, not shaming you I've only played one MMO with decent lore and it wasn't this one). But once again, I'll make this clear as I can, just because quests are forced on you doesn't make a mmo more story driven than the next.
Jesus christ, so does every other MMORPG that advertises lol. You get the lore bit then you get the other cool stuff.
Also I mainly play sandboxes and not super strict themeparks like XIV and WoW, so no, I can level up to max level simply by crafting in some of the games I play, they give us options and don't force us down one path.
Ngl, that's where I stopped reading. That's not the problem at all, the problem is you're arguing points that I'm not making. You're going all over the place to have an argument when the debate at hand is EXTREMELY simple.
The point (AGAIN) is that all MMORPGS are story driven, XIV is not the only one. XIV forcing quests on you does not make it story driven and make the other ones not.
EZ.