While I am disappointed about the lack of speed when it comes to removing gilsellers from the game, I would imagine it may hard to be completely rid of them as new accounts and characters are constantly used for the purpose (along with stolen accounts).

As for duty finder times, it is rather annoying having long waits as a DPS. But that is not something easily remedied by the developers since it needs to find players to group you with before you can do duties like Sastasha and Copperbell Mines. Try to befriend some people or join a linkshell and/or free company with people who are willing to help you. That's about all you can do to alleviate waiting times as a damage dealer, sad to say.

You just need to get to level 20 and join a grand company (and do a quest for the company) to use mounts. It is annoying to queue as a DPS and not be able to get a party immediately, but again; SE can't really control the populations of the players who choose to play tanks/healers/DPS and queue for lower level dungeons.

While the quests themselves are generally run from point A to B, etc., the writing is quite good and amusing to say the least, especially for an MMO that was built as fast as it was.

Many quest objectives in games (as a whole, not just MMO) are run from point A to B and talk to X, deliver Y, and/or kill Z, etc. It sticks out more in this one since it tells you exactly where to go and what to do I think. FFXI had it so you only get a very vague description at best that offers little in the way of explaining what to do (without using a wiki guide many players probably wouldn't figure quests out and would quit out of frustration), I like XIVARR's journal much better lol.

I can't speak for everyone, but the game is pretty well built. If you still have time left in your subscription try to get further in the story, it gets pretty good and it may hook you if you like stories in RPGs (likely the best story in any MMO to date). The duty finder problem is very annoying, but hopefully you'll have better luck getting in soon if you stick to the game.