Quote Originally Posted by qqmoarploxify View Post
It's pretty next level stupid of SE to force players to complete the original story quests up to and including before the fall in order to step foot into Heavensward. Got a few friends that bought the game and pre-ordered Heavensward but it looks like we wont be able to start the expansion right away since they dont have the time to finish all of the long and tedious quests leading up to it. I'm sure I'm not the only one having a problem with this. A new expansion should mean a new start and an equalization between the player base and gear. Everyone should be on equal footing.
If your friends are new players, they will need to level up, anyway. The Main Scenario quest progression offers a fair chunk of XP and guides players through content that they'll probably need to revisit later on. It's actually kind of difficult to manage to XP to 50 as a new player without utilizing the Main Scenario quests at all since SO much in the game is linked to them.

In short, it's not that big of a deal, especially since other new players (as well as existing players wanting to XP new jobs) will be going through the same content. Even if you put story considerations aside, it makes sense from a new player orientation standpoint. From what it looks like, there is nothing in the new areas for low-level characters, anyway; all the new dungeon content and presumably the open world content there is geared towards 50-60 progression.