The story is great, but it blatantly gets in the way of the rest of the game

[Mirhd]

The story is the game. There are other things to do, of course, but the story has always been the focus. The moment this changes will be a clear signal that the devs no longer care about delivering a cohesive narrative and will result in a loss of subs. When you change your target demographic, such a loss is inevitable, and this (among other things...) is what led to WoW being the mess it currently is.

Back to FFXIV : I think, more than anything, is that people ranting about ARR or post ARR being this awful slog taints the well, so to speak. Person A says it's horrible, person B hears this and goes into the game already biased against it and has a negative experience as a result. Are there parts that are a bit slow? Well certainly, but they aren't even close to being as terrible as certain folks have made them out to be.

EDIT: There's also this bizarre idea people have that they need to rush to end game, which... again, the story is the game. Why would you cut out a huge chunck of it to experience a (comparatively) minor part of it? Doesn't make sense to me. This just isn't that sort of game.