Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Ransu]

Here comes the broken record.....

My only other real experience with a FF title is XI.....SE's only other MMO. That game also has a lot of story, but it doesn't force you to complete 100% of every prior expansion before you can jump into current endgame (or whatever activity you were looking to do). You can have all the expansion stories (MSQ) open at various parts and work on them as you want. Now...the story isn't that continuous there, so it does make it easier. But then you have games like.....

What? You absolutely had to progress to specific parts of the story to unlock sky/sea in both RoZ and CoP expansions (Sky needed to be rank 12 in the story if I recall to open up access to the zone). CoP was especially annoying because specific fights lowered your level meaning you had to have level appropriate gear to do the fight.

ToAU also had specific content locked behind story progression.