Quote Originally Posted by Momo_Kozuki View Post
The game feels better to play through if you treat it like a long-term journey where every expansion matters instead of just the latest expansion. When you consider previous expansions "old" and just want to get to the "shiny new" one, the game's way of story presentation will become a chore-fest that test your patience.
YoshiP explained it the best, like this: think of FFXIV as an ongoing TV series. ARR is season 1, HW is season 2, SB season 3, ShB season 4 and Endwalker season 5. When shows are being made they are (generally) being made that you start at season 1 episode 1 and watch until you're caught up. You can skip to season 4, of course, but you'll be missing what happened in previous seasons.