The strategy of older MMO's was to make leveling extremely slow in the beginning so that even the hardest of the hardcore players would take a couple of months to reach max level. By then they'd be adding new content regularly and as the amount of endgame expanded, they would make it easier to reach max level.

Problem here is a lot of players *started* at max level and the game is designed so that not much effort is required to reach 50 anyway. Square Enix designed this game with a brand new MMO worth of content and a progression system of a 5-year old MMO.