Cannot finish ARR MSQs due to raids

[WhyAmIHere]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but how exactly are they "old raids" if you're only just up to them in the MSQ? When I did them I realized that for up to date players, this was old stuff, but it wasn't old to me, because it was my first time doing them. Are there ways of unlocking the crystal tower raids without doing them for the MSQ first? I just don't see the issue as you have to slog through a LOT of dungeons for the MSQ that are now "old" content for most players (but still "new" to you if you haven't done them before) this is just another set of them, only with 24 people.

way back when there was a more tedious method to unlock them.
SE wanted the crystal tower to be done by everyone, so they eased up on those requirements. then they made the tower mandatory for 5.3's MSQ.

[Iscah]

way back when there was a more tedious method to unlock them.
SE wanted the crystal tower to be done by everyone, so they eased up on those requirements. then they made the tower mandatory for 5.3's MSQ.

The only "more tedious" thing about the unlock, unless there was some older and worse method that I never experienced, is that you had to do specific FATEs rather than fixed battles when you travelled to the beast tribe strongholds to collect crystals. That potentially added a lot of tedious waiting time in the middle of the quest, but didn't make any difference to when or how you could do the quest chain overall.