My problem with leveling up in FFXIV.

[Jojoya]

I’m a pretty new player so take this from my point of view but I have had some issues with leveling in the game.

Until you get to the final expansion there seems to be no reason at all to do any questing other than the msq. And yeah FFXIV seems to do a great job for story but the problem for me has been that you do very little gameplay or experiencing the world and spend most your time traveling and reading all the story text. So when I get home at night and have an hour or two to play, the last thing I want to do is read and travel around a map so I end up just playing a low lvl job and doing levees so that I can relax and get some game action.

Am I alone here?

Traveling around and reading through quests for story is how you experience a world in a RPG. I'm unclear why you consider grinding through leve quests a better way to experience the world than doing the side quests.

There's more to game play than just combat. Game play is pretty much any activity you do in a game. Glamour, crafting, housing decoration... all forms of game play.

It's fine if you prefer more combat-focused activities but you're going to end up frustrated if you're playing a story-focused MMORPG like FFXIV because so much of the game is based on reading and watching the story unfold. You might want to consider a different type of game to play in your brief evening leisure time and save FFXIV for when you have a few more hours to play.