What the game's been missing?

[Enkidoh]

The dragons have been ravaging Coerthas even in 1.0 - Ishgard is stated as being in an eternal war against them. That doesn't mean that the entire zone has to be a battlefield all the time. And if you've completed the main storyline, you'll know that

following Operation Archon the Empire's advance into Eorzea has been effectively halted, if not eliminated completely - Gaius's death basically took the wind out of the XIVth Legion's sails - they were stated early on as being alone in Eorzea without any chance of support from Garlemald itself due to the infighting in the Imperial Court, so with Gaius gone, their march of conquest has essentially ended, at least for the foreseeable future. Sure, there's still Imperial troops around, but they're nothing more than remnant forces who are just an inconvenience instead of being a legitimate threat.

It sounds to me you just want something like Campaign or Assault from FFXI in XIV - the irony is Campaign is essentially the prototype for the FATE system anyway. It could stand to use some tweaks though I admit, but really, FATEs are already open world large scale conflicts anyway - putting a new Campaign style system into the game would just be superfluous.

[Animarelic]

The dragons have been ravaging Coerthas even in 1.0 - Ishgard is stated as being in an eternal war against them. That doesn't mean that the entire zone has to be a battlefield all the time. And if you've completed the main storyline, you'll know that ]

No one said ANYTHING about entire zones being besieged. The point is there are no natural predators or reasons to traverse the world after level cap in this MMORPG which is odd for any game of the genre. All that lore wise stuff is just an excuse. There is very little to no interaction in the world at this point and that is based on the development team's idea to instance most of the content in a non instanced world. Again no one said anything about campaigns but the world could stand a bit more challenge.