I do think something needs to be done to make the level 1 to current level cap or current expansion process more streamlined and less tedious, as I do not doubt that the game loses potential long time players over this. Some people are super into lore and that’s great, but some people are not ad enjoy the game for other reasons. Yes, someone who has zero interest in lore can still have long term fun in a game like ffxiv.

Personally I really don’t have much interest in the story at all. I’ve tried to get into it at various points and have always found it incredibly dull tbh, and realized I was just forcing myself to slog through walls of text, and then just went back to skipping it. I’m not saying is objectively bad or irrelevant (it’s obviously not) or anything just that it’s not for me, but I do enjoy everything else about the game.

Now, despite this I was obviously not put off by the new player experience because I was used to the idea of unlocking things as you go, and I did enjoy getting to see all the new environments and slowly learning how everything works in the game as I leveled. But I’m sure there are plenty of people who quit who would have otherwise stuck around had they not been presented with 100s of hours of running back and forth to get to current content. And yeah, it is only going to get worse the higher the level crap goes.

I think it would be a bit odd to just make the story and thus the road to unlocking new things totally optional as that’s not how this game is meant to work, but really, something other than pricey skip potions should be done with ARR, and especially the bit between ARR and HW, because I wouldn't doubt there are plenty of people who burn out after finishing ARR and realize they basically still have an entire game’s worth of quests standing between them and the next expansion.