Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Voltyblast]

Yes. Other MMOs do that. This one never has. It's unique. Why can't one MMO be allowed to be unique? Why does it have to just be like everything else?

Not to sound annoying, but FFXIV is not unique: SWTOR did it too when it comes to heavy emphasis on story and character (and choices that actually matter). And yet you're still allowed to skip the story if you don't care or not interested (you kinda are required at the start though, at least until you get the ship), as well as to choose which expansions you want to play without doing the previous one (once I reached level 50 I went straight to the last expansion, skipping everything before)

Also Guild Wars 2 has a lot of story centric parts, with your character even speaking and interacting and you get choices in how to proceed. But you can still explore freely.

And If we want to go back further, I guess FFXI also exists, and while I haven't played it at all I'm fairly sure it is also very story-centric but I heard it has some leeway with freedom. I can't say so someone feel free to correct me on that.

But again, not unique. More restrictive for sure, but not unique.