actual content

[Altanas]

I look at SWTOR as just having guildleves with cutscenes.

In FF11, the lore is already in place, its just implemented in a lazy fashion. As a consequence, it makes the game feel lacking in content and lacking in empathy for the characters and world.

A more structured approach linking the adventurer's guild -> camps -> open dungeons could enable SE to craft a more story orientated cutscene approach to levelling and give the impression of content.

As a basis, there are three factions (Horn and Hand etc). It wouldn't be too hard to edit / add a bit of lore in linking the guildleves per camp into one engrossing faction storyline starting at say camp blackbrush /bearded rock/etc and ending at the final highest level camps per region. In three regions, thats three storylines I can play on one character (without re-rolling alts like in SWTOR)

Faction leves are perhaps the most interesting, especially the "Wanted:..." leves. It would be more engrossing if the subject matter of those leves (i.e the criminals) had a presence in the game world outside of leves, perhaps as dynamic spawns or random NMs, HNMs

Turning all the summary text in the guildleves into cutscenes you encounter at the start, during and end of the guildleve, could easily add hours upon hours of content. It would make each leve a story in itself. Each leve story would be an episode. A casual will be satisfied playing one episode a day. And how many leves are in game? (ZAM counts 237 leves, thats a lot of content that has been implemented in a lazy fashion).

If the leves were "acted out" in a cutscene fashion, it would trump games like SWTOR, and not needing voiceacting, it can be done a lot quicker. SWTOR will stall for months because of voice recording.

For sidequests, there could be more linking in. At the moment its all very disjointed. You do a sidequest for one NPC then never have to talk to them again.

Another point to note is the "gotta catch em all" mentality. If, say, you could only enter Cassiopeia Hollow after doing the questline for Bearded Rock -> Bloodshore, that would as a consequence entice players to undertake the content. Similar in FF11, people went through ROZ , COP, TAU to open new zones/end game, in WOTG everything was open from the get go (at least when I played) so no one was interested in doing much except campaign.

There should have been some form of trade off however
a) for guidleves you should always be able to have aspect on in every leve (i.e. erase a limit on aspect and just apply a 50% bonus on all leves), and you complete a storyline to unlock areas or faction related things
b) for open world xp parties, you should have gotten guildmarks or something per kill
(i.e. something to make both methods of xp relevant and complement each other, not excluding each other)
c) company leves could easily stay as is for minor quicker solo content

That would in my opinion solve the questing for xp problem. And include story content. By locking content/areas away and unlocking them in logical stages, it would give players a sense of accomplishment.
You would also have welcome tangents in the faction quest lines (like for example, Cass Hollow would be a pirate related tangent, whereas the quest line towards the final camp would be preparing the player to go off against the Kobalds)