Quote Originally Posted by HyoMinPark View Post
While I agree 2.x could use some pruning, I wouldn’t say it would take a casual player years to get to current endgame—I think that’s a bit hyperbolic. They’d have to just not play for weeks/months at a time, or spend a lot of online time not doing MSQ for that to be the case.

The first time I did 2.x was back in early HW, and it took me about a month or so of just a couple hours each night (not every night, because I was working a lot at the time). But I was also doing the ARR EXs and farming them for ponies, so I wasn’t focused solely on the story. I did it again on an alt during SB, and I could do a patch a day—so it took maybe a week of 5~6 hours a day to get through 2.x. And that was without skipping anything, and queuing up for the dungeons/trials as a DPS.
A hyperbole in some cases maybe, but not all. I like this post on reddit where someone broke down exactly how long each section of MSQ took them on an alt. All told it took them about 200 hours with minimal sidequesting to finish everything from ARR to the end of Stormblood. If my friend plays 3 hours for one night a week, it would take her about one year to go from the beginning of ARR to the end of Shadowbringers.

Its a very difficult sell to recruit someone to the game even if they can play it every single night, because you have to tell them they'll need to play the game 200 hours straight without many diversions from the MSQ (plus probably another 30 now for Shadowbringers content?) before they can join the rest of us in content that actually matters. On top of that, the first 60 or so hours aren't all that interesting. Its hard to convince someone that the investment is worth it and I don't blame them.