An option for characters to start at level 50, pre-heavensward, for FREE

[Driavna]

It would also severely limit the scope of the MSQ. Hard to tell a greater story when you are limited to a very episodic, self-contained, villain of the week format.

You don't need to do that. MSQ can work just the same as today and have the same scope, some minor changes to avoid revisiting old areas is all the needed compromise but don't take the word "independent" literally. The difference is: once you hit level X you can move to the next if you want.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure is never going to happen and at some point, expansions will just come with a skip potion.

[Lersayil]

You don't need to do that. MSQ can work just the same as today and have the same scope. The difference is: once you hit level X you can move to the next if you want.

So keep the linear story telling... but make expansions skippable? Now I don't want to say thats ridiculous, but how would that even work? Out-level the expansion in question? Or like a skip potion? No one that cares even a teensy bit about the story would ever use this feature, as they would be utterly lost and skip over a large chunk of lore goodies.

I feel like repeating myself, but freely catering to the people that would outright skip to endgame might not be doing them much of a favour, given that current endgame content isn't really designed as a long term timesink like in other games.

EDIT: I just realized, but if you mean people accidently out-leveling the MSQ quests by a large margin, I think that only happens on the exp boosted shards, or by purposefully ignoring the MSQ for quite long stretches.