I've had multiple people I know irl quit because they saw a list of all of the quests they had to do to catch up to me, and decided the time investment isnt worth it. Most of them said the story was decent but it didnt grab them enough for it to matter. Despite all the people saying, "huehue this game isnt for you", and "have you ever played a FF game", this IS an mmorpg. I think the "this game isnt for you" comments make sense if, this game just had arr + HW. But now we have the base, and 4 expansions + all patch content, and even then your unlocks would be sparse after finishing msq so youd want to do some side content. It feels unreasonable to ask new players to undertake this to catch up to current content. If it wasnt, all of the people I tried to get into the game wouldve carried on playing. All of them wanted to play/raid with me, and loved playing MMOs.

One quit in ARR patch content, one at the start of HW, and another midway through ARR. My brother however cleared msq and levelled a few job to cap+ went heavy on fishing etc. However he's a lifelong FF fan, so that's the distinction between them. Even then he ended up quitting after EW anyway but thats a different story lol.

I think the best thing they could do for future players is establish a new optional starting point, at 7.0+ or whatever.