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

[Jojoya]

If you can't attract and retain new players, the game will eventually die.

They've continued to attract new players for years now and they end up retaining many of them. So where's the problem?

No MMO retains all of its new players. Not even WoW did. Outside of the rapid initial launch growth in Vanilla, the number of players subscribed was always a minority of total accounts created.

It's players that try to twist numbers into "this game is dying". It's not the numbers that do it. What usually kills a MMO is diverging too far from what had been a successful formula trying to attract a demographic that had no interest in the game and alienating what had been a happy and loyal player base in the process so those players quit.

Whether it happens to be an MMO or not does not matter, it's still an MMO. It sells itself as being an MMORPG, not a JRPG with very few MMO aspects time-gated behind 200+ hours of solo questing with rare occasions of Duties/Trials.

It's absolutely fine that you like the story, I do too. What I don't like is it is REQUIRED. It is a MANDATORY slog of 200+ hours of story of very linear progression.

The majority of people who don't want changes are those who played the game cycle by cycle, so they haven't had to do it from start to finish. So, here's a challenge for you all, Go back to ARR with a level 1 character, NEVER touch any of the other side-stuff that doesn't get unlocked by the MSQ, do the REQUIRED dungeons/trials and see how long it takes before you give up and go back to the end-game.

I've done that multiple times, and I will continue to do it again in the future. Why?

Because I enjoy going through the story and the character progression. I get the alt to level cap and then delete it. When I'm in the mood to repeat the process, I'll create a new alt and start again. Eventually I'll finish MSQ and delete it.

You're assuming that a MMORPG must revolve around end game when it doesn't need to. That's some terrible conditioning Blizzard inflicted on the industry with WoW's success and the industry ended up stagnating as a result. Every new MMO kept trying to copy WoW's formula and most ended up failing.

What's part of FFXIV's success? Because it doesn't follow WoW's "everything must revolve around end game formula". It offers a different experience despite a similarity to many design elements. Lower level content remains fun and even relevant to a fair degree. The journey matters to the game instead of just being a checkbox on a "To Do" list.