I also recall them saying at some point that Endwalker was originally supposed to be 7.0 and finish at level cap 100. But then covid happened and we lost an entire story driven expansion to that. Which is why EW is so clunky and rushed. A lot of story elements got retconned last min and others were entirely abandoned. The chip shortage also didn't help the situation and their focus/staff team was very split on where things needed attention most. Now with all the WoW players coming over, they have decided that revamping the early game takes priority.

They basically pulled a Stormblood where the expansion was split between Ala Mhiego and Doma. Except EW was worse with it because we went to way more places around the world globally in one expansion, and somehow travelled to the Edge of the Universe faster than Omega could fly to Earth. They REALLY need to stop trying to shove so many locations into one expansion. It makes the world feel smaller not bigger. Like in HW we basically stayed strictly in the northern parts of Eorzea. But then we get EW where an entire large continent is shoved into one zone. An entire moon is shoved into one zone. It's really unappealing.