I still don't really understand this gripe. So I am going to start a new character and see how this plays out. Because I only have one alt and I made it back in Heavenward and it was the same horrible crawl to get past the lvl 50 content, into the Expac. Still got stuck behind dungeon level requirements. Still struggled through story instance battles (back before the game gave you obligatory healing during those). So I'm not seeing where being a higher level and still being hobbled to story areas with vendor gear suddenly becomes game-breaking.

You realize that no new players can play the game 'as it was originally intended' because it has been changed with every Expac? In the days of HW, only certain areas carried certain level gear and only for the classes/jobs that city would unlock--now the major cities carry all the available gear up to level 50 without you having to go to the area appropriate to that level. Back then, to advance your job you had to level a sometimes completely unrelated class to lvl 15 to get your job stone. And you could only use certain skills if you leveled the class that had that skill to the appropriate level. You want Swiftcast? You better level that THM, cause that's the only class that had it. Not to mention certain skills being locked behind job quests.

ARR is an almost completely different animal now. But it can still kill you. The fact that you can level faster just makes it so you can survive being smacked around a little better (and honestly only just). But to each their own. I'm going to start a new character and see how much the extra leveling negatively affects my experience.

On a side note, have you tried doing a new Game+? I'm curious as to how that plays out.