Although I know one of the main attractions for Final Fantasy XIV is its story I think we all have to come to the realization that many, many players just are not interested in the story and want to enjoy the game all the same. Many players have friends they'd like to recommend the game to but can't because of the hundreds of hours of content new players would have to get through in order to join them in current content. I think with 7.0 (really 6.x) being the start of a new story in game it might be time to allow players to start there. How to do this?

Well there are a number of solutions. One would be to introduce a new experience for new players in order to introduce them to the mechanics of the game while quickly leveling them to the current level cap. Take something like Palace of the Dead where you have a leveling system separate from the main games and you can level from 1 to 60 in about an hour. While I don't think it needs to be quite that quick it could be something like 10-20 hours, which is much more of a reasonable ask than 100s. THis could even be a more condensed way to get players caught up with the world of FFXIV, though they wouldn't need to do that. During this 10-20 hour new player experience you'd get introduced to basic mechanics of the game, a dungeon or two and a trial before being put into the main game.

An alternative idea (though less interesting IMO) would be to give 1 free story skip and job skip to all new subscribers (not Free Trial players.)

So what do you think?