You seem not to have noticed what guildleves are intended to be. A quick and dirty repeatable leveling medium.
Nothing I said or suggested goes against that concept. You simply want to live in denial, and that's okay, but I hope you won't base your suggestions on your twisted views of what can or can't be done to a game system in the future.

Sorry mate, but I'm afraid that tastes different than yours are still valid, as much as you don't seem to accept that.
They may be valid, but they are still not objectively any better because of it. That's what matters here. I'm not saying someone can't like a poorly constructed and presented lore, that simply doesn't make the lore any better.

That's all nice and fun, but it's *text*. While It's definitely a nice read, it doesn't exactly equate to something that can get a new player hooked in nowadays' market. You need the fireworks to do that, and the fireworks are missing.
Thus the Garleans are about to attack, and the lore makes it quite obvious.

Oh, but they are not attacking *now*, so they will never attack.

You got the examples. The fact that you don't *personally* like them (since it seems that for you FFXIV is the only game with a cool lore out there, lol). doesn't make less valid examples.
Valid, bad examples. FFXIV is not the only game with cool lore out there, but those games are few and far between. Blizzard managed to build their game on the Warcraft lore (while it is not by any means perfect illustration of the lore, it is good) so hats off to them. XI, while started off mediocre, also succeeded in creating an interesting lore, if only through the story, from the ground-up. There are not many games with objectively good lore that is well presented, and they all have some flaws, but it is a huge appeal nonetheless. If everything in the game is designed as "hay dis boss looks cool and should be fun to fight" instead of "this boss is a part of the background story and an important part of the overall storyline" the game comes off as shallow at best. It's like a series of fights, areas and text without context or it is simply an afterthought (that shows).

Some may like it, I don't doubt that at all, but that doesn't make them any better.

You mean that childish, messy, half-copied cauldron of cheap pop culture and sad comic relief? Quite refined...
Well, it's not without its faults, but all those things fit the game's overall style. It is not classy like XI and XIV try to be, and that's kinda the point. The important thing is to make everything fit to the style you want to present to the players. I can see why you wouldn't like how they do things (hell, I don't find it appealing either) but it all makes sense from their PoV and those who like that style also find pop culture references and comic relief entertaining.

Some other games with similar style often try to be way too serious, and the whole presentation falls on it's face. It's a delicate road, and even if you can try to mimic the art style and gameplay, you can't really imitate the lore. You need to make it fit your own game. That's harder than it sounds. For example, I think AoC would have benefited from a more classy approach to the lore and over-all style but I think they didn't quite make it. LOTRO also feels like they try to make the lore and presentation of it more cartoonish and "silly", but is that what you'd expect from a game based on the Tolkien classic? Maybe, maybe not. There's definitely an appeal for both, but personally I think that they should have taken the background their game is built on a bit more seriously than they did. It does have it's merits though, and I think aside from WoW and XI/V, it succeeds better than most other games.

Yep, of course you think they're gonna add the world to low levels in a few months.
The present situation is that they have added to the low levels and they have stated that they add to the low levels in the future as well, at the very least tutorials and such. Even if you think about the present, you need to take into account what they are already doing in the future, things we are aware of, and build from there. You can't simply ignore what they've said and only look at the present situation, because what you are suggesting is coming with said other changes.

Actually the main points of criticism to FFXIII are that the characters are shallow, there's little involvement and character progression, and the story is too simplistic.
Actually you are pulling these "main points of criticism" out of your arse. Where is the source stating that these are the main points of criticism? Or is this only some attempt to make up info to make your opinion about the criticism of XIII feel more valid and important? Because I ain't buying it. Source or it didn't happen.

And if you think that what I described as the criticism for XIII doesnt apply, do say so. People do want open world, cities, sidequests to do and towns full of NPC's. It may not be the only criticism, but that doesn't change the fact that these criticisms are things that sandboxish games have and what the target audience wants, among other things. And you should know that the opposite of a dense, story-driven game is a sandbox game. The audience can't want two different things at once. Further, what this games story lacks it makes up for it in lore and, as was said, the personal story you make for yourself, which is pretty much one of the main appeals of MMO's even if people have a hard time trying to pinpoint it.