Quote Originally Posted by TheRogueX View Post
So basically, you're absolutely wrong. 3 of their 5 expansions had new LOW LEVEL zones in which their new races could level up.
Well, your first mistake was comparing XIV to WoW.
The fundamental difference between XIV and WoW is that each time a new class is released, existing players MUST, no exceptions, create a brand new character to play it on.
The new 'leveling zones' you refer to are the 1 - 10/20 tutorial zones. Designed to guide a brand new player through the beginning of the game.
That tutorial is handled by the Active Help system here in XIV.

Whenever WoW releases a new race, that race is forced to have its own starter zones, as WoW has a Race=City system.
Since each race beyond the original vanilla ones needed a "reason" to be part of the Horde or Alliance, they need to also have a 'storyline' which introduces them to their respective factions.

We here in XIV do not discriminate by race. There a plenty of Ishgardians outside of Ishgard.
Our player characters are "From a distant land".
As with the ROG and NIN, the story for them is independent (i will NOT spoil it, but any who has done it will know what i mean by this) to the Main Story, despite the obvious connection with certain characters who appear late in the Main Story.

It's my guess that the DRK will be introduced in such a way that is as independent of the main story as ROG/NIN managed to be. And i can think of a few ways they might accomplish that.