I was thinking more along the lines of something truly gritty and engaging. An in-depth murder mystery, perhaps, or riddled with intrigue. I didn't dislike the Scholasticate quests but the cynic in me firmly believes that it was planned to be a Hildibrand style story all along. You need to have completed the Hildibrand quests to even tackle it and whilst I found some of the characters quirky and interesting...it seems like it'll inevitably be the same story about unwashed peasants overcoming their betters that we've seen so many times before.
If I'm not mistaken they've even for the guy responsible for Vagrant Story, FFXII and Final Fantasy Tactics on the development team. If that's true then it is my hope that they'll assign him to the task of going all out and creating some pretty engaging and morally grey side stories. Hildibrand can show up somewhere, since that's pretty inevitable, but I have a nasty feeling that 'bizarre facial expressions' and 'comedy quests' are going to overtake seasonal events and side quests as we move forward. I left WoW for that reason and I really, really don't want to see FFXIV go down that same road.
I don't mean to be so negative but I'm just passionate about the game. Heck, I don't even mind humour if it's clever and witty - but Hildibrand is excessive 'potty' humour and that just bores me.
Sadly I realise that I'm very much in the minority though. But it is my firm belief that varied side quests are important.