Gating the whole expansion

[Kiara1]

He is at lord of the whorl. He needs to beat a couple of primals and trials. I've been in trial queue for over an hour now and no pop so far actually havent even found a 2nd dps yet. It's gonna take forever for him to enter ishgard because no one is doing the old content right now.

[MirielleLavandre]

I, for one, am a little jealous of all the new 50s who will be able to not only get xp for their MSQ (therefore get tons of xp towards lvl 51-60 that most of us never got), but also get i110 drops to be fully 110 probably before they even enter SoF. They actually should be happy The OP, though, seems upset that he cannot get to the new areas to mine, which was the same dilemma that prompted a huge thread on this very topic earlier with crafters hating the fact they needed to do the MSQ or people with alts who didn't want to do it. For these people, yes - the MSQ would seem drudgery, but as everyone already said, SE said it numerous times and in many, many articles and interviews that 2.55 was required. It is what it is, and I don't foresee it ever being changed.

[Scarletyoshi]

I slogged through the storyline beforehand but I agree that it was a mistake to gate the entire expansion behind it. It is not fun to slog through that storyline moving trinkets from here to there and traveling malms to have conversations that could have taken place by linkpearl. If they wanted to gate the expansion for "story" reasons, they should have released it with a much more streamlined version of the main story. People have fun in different ways; there are those who enjoy reading paragraphs of text on what some NPC ate for dinner and clicking shiny targets on the ground. That's awesome for them, glad they have the opportunity. Others just want to smack the black off a dragon and for them it is torture and not fun. It trains you for nothing except how to persevere through relentless tedium.

There were ways to do this so that everyone could enjoy parts of the expansion. It was the developer's choice to structure the expansion this way, and I think they made the wrong one.

[Seig345]

I just find it interesting that when the plans for ARR were first announced. one of the big criticisms was that it sounded like another WoW clone, and now one of the main complaints about the expansion is how WoW does it different.

Between not being able to ride your own chocobo, join a GC, or even play as a job instead of a class before playing through quests of some kind, I'm not sure why there's even any surprise. Disappointment, sure, but anyone who's level 50 in this game should have seen this coming before SE even said anything (which was still quite awhile back).

[Terribad]

And yet, MMO players ought be more familiar with bland fetch quests than FF players. You can burn through them pretty quickly, and combat is no sweat for anyone who's level 50 and has acquired a modicum of gear. The only players who ought to complain are newbies who have the entire MSQ before them, and even then, it hand holds them to level 50 anyways.

Being familiar with fetch quests doesn't really hold in this case. It's a new map, new classes and so on. Having to do hours of it before you can get to the new stuff isn't really smart imo. Me and my guild decided to return to give it a try. You know pop in for an xpac, see if it's worth staying now, etc. But since we left so long ago (Back when i90 was the highest) we can't. Luckily for us, unlike OP, we decided to read before we actually bought it.

to be fair SE went to great lengths to help new players- double exp, faster ques, more items, only one type of tome to collect.
also if this was a regualr mmo - it is still an expac that would require completion of 2.0 or would u rather them charge a fee to fast word people to level 50/ishgard

Hours of doing fetch quests, doubling exp doesn't help speed through the quests.
Majority of other MMOs do no require anything to be completed before accessing content with expansions. If they do it's usually a level requirement before you can enter a certain dungeon (which is understandable) or completing a handful of quests.

In the end, it is what it is. I just think it should've been handled way differently. Gating some stuff is completely understandable. Gating all of it is odd, but eh. *Shrugs*

[AzraelX]

Don't be so mean guys.

A good chunk of the population are just mmo players, not extreme die hard ff fans. Gating an entire expansion with jobs and such behind hours upon hours of useless dribble and fetch quests is a bit extreme. It's not common with MMOs.

to be fair SE went to great lengths to help new players- double exp, faster ques, more items, only one type of tome to collect.
also if this was a regualr mmo - it is still an expac that would require completion of 2.0 or would u rather them charge a fee to fast word people to level 50/ishgard

[Lexia]

Had they allowed to at least ENTER the new area I would be ok. As it is now, I paid for an expansion I can not see AT ALL which in turn is not right. Can I get a refund until I am allowed to get into the expac then? Because I paid for a product I am not allowed to utilize at all.

That would break the lore of the game

[Ninja-Mage]

This game is not WoW - if you want WoW and all the handouts it gives you, go play WoW. This really wasn't a surprise from the dev team - they told us like 2 months ago we needed to beat the main scenario in order to proceed.

[AzraelX]

I get it it suxs. I hate to do it on my alt whos only level 30 cuz i want to be MACH/AST so bad. yea I complained and yelled. But initially SE wasn't going to do ANYTHING to help you gear/speed through- only thing they said was-"better start playing now." So it me 2 months to get to 50. And only completed 2.55 after the huge nerf.

basically it sucks-but at least they did something. best thing to do is just do MSQ-skip all cut scenes. doubt they will change it if they haven't changed how to get rogue at level 10 to start at 1- to get a secondary class to level 15 just to get a job- don't think they will this. It is what is.....at least the game is awesome.

[NolLacnala]

I want to start on disc two!

No. You'll take your level 50 quest exp that we didn't get and ENJOY it.