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

[Illmaeran]

Edit: reading through other responses has my scratching my head, it's like a load of people ignored the "I'm enjoying the story" part to then dunk on the opinion with a dismissive "if you don't like the story don't play a story mmo" response.

It's one thing to enjoy the content of the story and another to dislike the way the story's presented deeply enough to no longer enjoy the game.

Having the story presented in quests and cutscenes ties it to processes that the OP is finding unenjoyable; namely the massive number of quests needed to complete in order to make further content available. Having capital cities and access to Poetics gear locked behind MSQ progress was incredibly frustrating for me when I started replaying the game. Imagine starting Heavensward at two levels higher than that expansion's max level (62) and not being able to get lvl 60 Poetics gear because you couldn't get to Rhalgr's Reach, or being level 89 when just starting the final zone of 5.0 Shadowbringers and not having access to the full array of vendors in Eulmore. It's a similar situation; I love the game and story, but being held back due to prior design decisions can be extremely frustrating.

Not everything is for everyone. I enjoy cola drinks, but given the choice of having Coke or Pepsi, I'll choose Coke every time. In fact, I'll choose a different drink if Pepsi's the only cola option. I'm very happy that so many people are trying XIV after all these years; however, it's an old game with a lot of content designed with a story-first philosophy that's different from most MMOs. That's not going to be to everyone's taste and there's nothing wrong with that. Life's too short to spend time on something that's intended to be fun doing, even though doing it isn't fun enough to warrant the doing of it. If I were in the OP's shoes, I'd probably be having the same experience; this is a hell of a lot of game to get through to reach current content and play with friends.

Around Christmas 2018 I picked up WoW again to give BfA a try before Classic launched. Having not played since the initial Cata release, I had 7 years of content to get through. Going through all of that was a huge slog that was just barely enjoyable enough to keep me playing, but not fun enough that I wanted to keep playing it after catching up on what I missed. If I'd had friends waiting for me at endgame I'd probably have put it away out of frustration at how long it was taking and how much stuff was locked behind that massive wall of content.

Such is the risk and cost of starting a 10-year old MMO from scratch.

[DezereDawn]

It's one thing to enjoy the content of the story and another to dislike the way the story's presented deeply enough to no longer enjoy the game.

Having the story presented in quests and cutscenes ties it to processes that the OP is finding unenjoyable; namely the massive number of quests needed to complete in order to make further content available. Having capital cities and access to Poetics gear locked behind MSQ progress was incredibly frustrating for me when I started replaying the game. Imagine starting Heavensward at two levels higher than that expansion's max level (62) and not being able to get lvl 60 Poetics gear because you couldn't get to Rhalgr's Reach, or being level 89 when just starting the final zone of 5.0 Shadowbringers and not having access to the full array of vendors in Eulmore. It's a similar situation; I love the game and story, but being held back due to prior design decisions can be extremely frustrating.

Not everything is for everyone. I enjoy cola drinks, but given the choice of having Coke or Pepsi, I'll choose Coke every time. In fact, I'll choose a different drink if Pepsi's the only cola option. I'm very happy that so many people are trying XIV after all these years; however, it's an old game with a lot of content designed with a story-first philosophy that's different from most MMOs. That's not going to be to everyone's taste and there's nothing wrong with that. Life's too short to spend time on something that's intended to be fun doing, even though doing it isn't fun enough to warrant the doing of it. If I were in the OP's shoes, I'd probably be having the same experience; this is a hell of a lot of game to get through to reach current content and play with friends.

Around Christmas 2018 I picked up WoW again to give BfA a try before Classic launched. Having not played since the initial Cata release, I had 7 years of content to get through. Going through all of that was a huge slog that was just barely enjoyable enough to keep me playing, but not fun enough that I wanted to keep playing it after catching up on what I missed. If I'd had friends waiting for me at endgame I'd probably have put it away out of frustration at how long it was taking and how much stuff was locked behind that massive wall of content.

Such is the risk and cost of starting a 10-year old MMO from scratch.

This is pretty understandable, thank you for the response c: