MSQ

[Iscah]

I see it from a dev perspective and trying to avoid the complaints around Heavensward again. The expansions are pretty much designed for new players to jump right into expansion content, and there were A LOT of complaints about players wanting to jump into HW and play the new jobs but still being in, say, 2.1.

Which is why 5.0 exists in that "if you haven't done CT, it hasn't happened YET for you. But it will happen at some point in your future." bubble. Their bottom-line for 5.0 would have been players who are jumping right in with skip potions or who joined at 4.0 and haven't done ARR side-content, or who are just jumping in the game and putting a block at lvl 50 ALONGSIDE the 80 quests between ARR and HW would have been too much. Therefore, they wanted to give those players a "buffer period" where they could jump right in to the expansion content without going "Wait, I have to do a whole questline with THREE level 50 raids?!" I guess by the time 5.3 rolled around they figured it had been enough and anyone who bought ShB without running CT had had more than enough time to do so.

I do think that's what happened and why we didn't get the requirement at the time 5.0 released, but I mean when they added the requirement in 5.3 for players to do it before progressing to 5.3. That's already a secondary catch point for players who missed the proper gate at 2.5, so I feel like at the same time they could/should have added a gate in 4.5 or 4.55 as well.

It won't affect story skips in any case, since post-5.3 the original Crystal Tower raids are completed along with all the other MSQ up to that point, just like they previously included the optional-but-required hard primal fights.