How would you design a new player start expansion?

[Shistar]

The current content which people say there's not enough of or is too difficult or paradoxically too easy and that they hate it and that the story is bad as well and Wuk Lamat should die in a fire...

I mean, most of this is people having opposite impressions, really. There's not a lot of middle ground for these people to stand on even after some of the adjustments they made in recent patches, and the disappointment has led to some to lash out at the other group in search of the reason why the game "suddenly sucks so bad".

Agree on everything else you said, I really like the idea of the Minstrel being the vehicle to revisit older expansions!

[Nadda]

I mean, most of this is people having opposite impressions, really. There's not a lot of middle ground for these people to stand on even after some of the adjustments they made in recent patches, and the disappointment has led to some to lash out at the other group in search of the reason why the game "suddenly sucks so bad".

Agree on everything else you said, I really like the idea of the Minstrel being the vehicle to revisit older expansions!

Thank you kindly tbf the italicized bit was more to be sarcastic so I'm happy we're on the same page.
Regardless of anything I think it would be a good idea to do some alternative.

[Raim]

The game would make no sense with all this content being gone. Going down the WoW route is a huge mistake, even if it pushes away some new people who dislike story content. The MSQ 'is' XIV for most people and Yoshida himself said its a RPG first.

[XtremePrime]

The MSQ 'is' XIV for most people and Yoshida himself said its a RPG first.

If it's an RPG first, why does it have fewer RPG elements than FFXI?

[ForteNightshade]

Essentially, I wouldn't. Because each expansion is a continuation of the previous story, and even 1.0 players started ARR with their existing levels and EXP intact, it wasn't reset (thus there was a whole section of players who started ARR at level cap), so such an idea would completely invalidate that.

New players who want to skip ahead to the most recent expansion have the story skip items on the Online Store to use anyway, so such an idea is completely redundant.

Except that's asking new players to pay an additional 50$. So no, having a built in option is far from redundant.

Part of the reason for the declining player numbers is new players aren't supplementing the loss of veterans. And that's because it takes hundreds of hours just to catch up to current content. For a lot of people, that's a deal breaker. Especially once you factor in how horrendous the game is at allowing you to play with friends. You look at any online discussion and you'll see people frustrated how they constantly have to break parties because the game goes seemingly out of its way to do so. Nevermind, it's not exactly fun for the friend is will be left waiting around with little to do.

[Shistar]

Thank you kindly tbf the italicized bit was more to be sarcastic so I'm happy we're on the same page.
Regardless of anything I think it would be a good idea to do some alternative.

lol fair enough, I misunderstood!