Quote Originally Posted by DPZ2 View Post
If your friends dislike story-heavy MMOs, they're not going to appreciate the leveling experience in any case
I do agree that the last couple of posters sound like they would have been prime candidates for purchasing skips. I won't speak to their long term enjoyment of the game but if their current time enjoyment comes from doing the "end game content with friends" that's the quickest and easiest way to achieve that, and it is provided as an option.

I've been thinking a bit on the quoted point specifically though and I do think it raises a valid point as well. It's not necessarily just about The Story because it really is that the entire levelling progression process for a first character is based around the MSQ. Not that there aren't other ways to level of course as we always have extra jobs to level somehow but the general course of character progression does run straight through the MSQ. If SE completely detached the story from the progression then we'd largely be left with a fairly hollow levelling experience. I can understand someone being discouraged by the amount of story to play through to get to "end game" if they're just starting out new, but I'm not really sure they'd be more encouraged by being told "Okay, just do your dailies/weeklies and grind dungeons/FATEs for a couple of months and you'll be able to play with us!" any more. At least the story can be clicked through and the cutscenes can be skipped in a way that the grind can't.

In any case, I do think the best thing for SE to do at this point is find some way to create an alternate starting point, which is something they are clearly thinking about as YoshiP himself has mentioned as much.