Quote Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora View Post
There has been no change from the story being required to unlock features from Day 1 of ARR, aside from them later selling a story skip for those who want it.

I have no skin in the game if SE wants to develop a patch-story skip they can sell to people who can't be bothered to skip through the story manually.

As far as "research vs. playing" there is a free trial that covers 2 expansions and the base game. If you don't understand that story unlocks dungeons/trials/raids after that much playtime, then I don't know what to tell such people.
Ultimately it's up to SE whether or not they want to see players that would have possibly become avid regular subscribers of their game just quit because they just can't stand the story. Quite a shame in a way.