The story is way better and solid than a certain other mmo.

Its failing isn't itself per se, but the fact it was done in a way where you have to do it serially in completion across all xpacs.

In WoW, you're not forced to play all of the xpacs back to back.
In fact, since BfA or so, they start you off in dedicated new player zones that then dump you off in the xpac before latest xpac.
What Blizzard instead has done for lore folks is let you play older xpacs out of order/at your own pace w/ chromie time. This lets players engage with end game much faster, rather than deleting the MMO halfway because it's taking too long.

BTW, I am a player who xp-locked a toon just to keep one permanently in chromie time. I also am one of the players who get angry when they're booted out of an xpac because they out-leveled it, hence why MSQ exists in the first place in FFXIV. That said, having the issue of the story being unable to broken up into smaller pieces that can be done out of order was a mistake.

Hopefully 7.0 gives enough of a lore break that the devs can allow new players to level up in a potential new zone that dumps them off at the start of latest xpac instead.

Story of FFXIV is solid, that's not the issue when people often complain about it. It's misdirected analysis on the true issue.