Is there anything meaningful/gratifying to do in this game that's not MSQ?

[Penthea]

Heavensward might actually have a good story, and I may even enjoy it when I view the cutscenes later at my leisure, when I'm in the mood to watch a movie, not play a video game.

This won't work because for a lot of the cutscenes to make sense you're going to need to know what npcs say outside of cutscenes. You can try it but don't be surprised when a lot of it doesn't make sense.

But you are wrong to fault me for skipping the story when it functions in practice as a roadblock. Many of you are veterans compared to me, and probably played through this content when it was new and live, and there were other people going through it for the first time, experiencing it together

People are "faulting" you because you have complained about having to do something that is central to the entire game. It is highly unlikely for a person who finds story as little other than a roadblock to be able to enjoy most Final Fantasy games, including this one. You complaining about having to go through a story in a FF game is like complaining about having to fight in Tekken.

Also don't assume everyone got through the story because they started it with their friends and when it was new. Despite what my join date says, I didn't get to play the game properly until long after HW launched and I didn't join a fc until I was max lvl, so I worked through the majority of the available msq on my own without anyone to push me into it. I personally know people who started playing several patches after SB launched and like me didn't need encouragement from other people to play.

I on the other hand cannot overstate how desolate these areas are now, rarely I'll pass somebody else on a black chocobo to remind me that I'm playing a multiplayer game

Are you new to mmos? It is extremely common for areas that are for old or mostly only lvling story content to be "dead" given most players at max lvl will be hanging around at places where they can do max lvl content. This is far from unique to this game.

WoW was like this too, except it didn't gate quite as much of its content behind quite as long a main story.

Oh nevermind, you're not so new to this genre. But that game has dead zones too so....yea.

If you want to play WoW then I suggest that you play WoW. Don't go to another game with a completely different name, made by an entirely different studio and developed on the other side of the planet...and expect it to be very much like WoW.

Look man, I get it that you don't like to essentially be told "you're playing the game wrong" but you complained about the most pivotal feature in the game and then asked if other content was worth playing. Of course people are telling you to play something else. You don't sound like you're part of the target audience, and that's fine. Not every game is for everyone.