To add a quick note as a new player that just played through ARR and is in Heavensward right now:

I thoroughly enjoyed playing through ARR!
- The Story was great, I loved every bit of it, including exploring the world
- The pacing really allowed me to learn the Job I'm playing right now well
- The one hiccup to the entire process was doing group content; most of the time it was fun because after noting I was new, a lot of players were really helpful and patient! It only was an issue a couple of times where folks were apparently solely focused on speed running and didn't want to communicate at all, or larger group content where some folks just delved into straight-up harassment of others for "not playing perfectly"

I'm not new to MMOs though so that last one wasn't really a surprise, lol. If anything, I've appreciated how the majority of the time folks were really nice and supportive. Definitely a difference from the majority of games I've played in the past.