The content between the end of ARR and Heavensward is not very good.

[ArcanoJones]

Don't get me wrong I love this game however the 100 or so quests that you have to do to get to Heavensward are a dull long boring grind for the most part. At least for me they are . Just a lot of running back and forth talking to people. I am nearly to the end having completed about 75 of them. I am nearly ready to fight Shiva I think. But its a tough grind and its wearing me down. I am not going to let it deter me however as I have purchased the expansions and I mean to play them. They need to put some way in to the game to bypass this stuff...or possibly condense it somehow. As I can see this burning some people out.

[Keydah]

They added real money potions to skip the ARR and HW stories, that's probably about it as far as fixing it goes, sadly.

[Frizze]

Also, just my opinion and obviously looking back with the benefit of hindsight, closing in on Shiva and the homestretch into the start of HW is where the story really starts to pick up. They spent(wasted) a lot of time setting up the pieces, now you get to see the action play out. And some of those storylines continue to pay off as of the current story patch. And many(most?) people agree the story continues to get better. The Dragonsong War is nicely handled, and the Stormblood campaign has a couple good twists and turns to it. So for sure, stick it out. Youll be glad you did.

[Miufille]

As a new player who's just about to finish this stretch of questing, I would say stick with it - it definitely gets better. I think you will also see how the various parts of the questline come together in surprising ways...

At any rate, it's still better than what are IMO the two lowest parts of ARR (fetchquesting pre-Titan and pre-Garuda and the awkward empty level gap that follows).

[MellowJellyfish]

I'm a new player who purchased Stormblood on like quest 95 of ARR quest list and I agree it's a chore but I'm told it gets better and I choose to believe it so I'm getting on through it all!

[Maero]

The formula has not changed all too much between ARR > SB
I think they know we hate fetch quests but add them in to laugh at us...
The story at least is pretty damn good, and i highly suggest for you guys to find a group later on and try The Binding Coil of Bahamut, that offers yet a even better story
and the raid in general was the best thus far.

[Shurq]

I slogged thru it. Took me near on a week from the moment I hit 50 'til the moment I opened the gates to Ishgard. Story had its moments but i kept wishing I could just waltz into the new areas at level and pickup the main storyline from there like in pretty much every other MMO on the market.

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

[Hestzhyen]

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

Well the HW post-60 quests are not as long and meandering as the ARR quests- they still deliver on the quality story without taking up too much of your time with "but what could this MEAN? Go run to that person 10 yalms away and ask for me, would ya?". It's much more compact and focused. There's a good bit of it and some cut scenes are very long but it's nowhere near the Primal of the Week era of ARR in terms of padding. You'll have reasons to get sent into the duties you do beyond "oh crap someone tripped and woke up a primal WoL deal with it pls".

SE knows that the ARR experience is lacking, both for new players who just want to get to the fun parts and for vets who can't stand being sent on silly missions to play verbal messanger or kill 10 boars and bring back their butts. They've been trying to rectify this ever since with new stuff but there's no practical way for them to go back and re-do all the old stuff while still making new content for us to play every 3 months.

[Frizze]

Seriously dreading a repeat experience when I hit 60 and have to slog thru the HW endgame to get to SB.

This is a case where the devs heard the people complaining and took it to heart. The 2.x series was an even 100 quests, a quick count shows the 3.x series to be 44. That includes 4 or 5 solo instances(1 or 2 of which people complained at the time were hard), 4 dungeons and 1 trial. Theres a bit of meandering about and "what does it all mean" as you might expect in an RPG, but overall it does a good job of staying focused and setting up the next steps that need to be taken and there are a few absolutely epic moments in that stretch. The other big thing they learned was not to gate EVERYTHING behind the MSQ. You couldnt play a DRK/MCH/AST until you got into ishgard because thats where the trainers were. The new job trainers for SB are in Ul Dah so you can get an earlier start on those classes if you so choose.