Quote Originally Posted by DPZ2 View Post
World of Warcraft's solution to the problem, after, um, 16+ years of multiple expansions and patches over a long period of time was "just ditch it all, the story doesn't matter, the lore doesn't matter, players want to get to end game. Period". The level squish and the rewriting of the History of Azeroth resulted in Shadowlands, one big "what's going on here?" followed by a big "just go with it, it doesn't matter. you're here to raid, right?!?" It took 15 years to get Party Sync, which has yet to address the Horde vs. Alliance leveling problem.
Less of a "story doesn't matter" as "Our story is pretty well episodic and players replay the story each and every time they level another job, so... why not let them level through whichever episode they want, instead of making leveling a 200+ hour grind of all stories combined or disjointed in its rush when shrinking it down to something more reasonable?"