I still feel, at thevery least ARR definitely needs more trimming.
It's a step below the expansions in term of gameplay and storytelling complexity and yet still requires by far the longest time to get through.

After dwelling on it for a while I feel the Crystal Tower raid series is more engaging from a gameplay and plot standpoint than the several dozen quests that were removed, but it still takes several hours to complete.

In regards to the point amount of time saved by removing and trimming several dozen quests I feel SE failed to condense the ARR MSQ due to mandating the Crystal Tower series.