I guess everything in here that can be said has been said already, but here's my two cents anyways.

On the days that I work, I usually only have about 3 hours to play in the morning, before I have to go in. That's it! 3 whole hours a day. I'm still working on my first level 50, and I do the main quest line when I can (trying to save as many side quests for the alt classes as possible, but I generally steal the side quests from the hubs where the main quest takes me).

But now I've gotten to a point where I can't advance the story until I do Stone Vigil, and I have to choose how to best optimize my very very limited amount of play time. Three hours is enough time to do a run if I manage to get a good group. But the exp/hr is a pittance compared to fates. I'll hold off on Stone Vigil until my next day off. Instead, I'll continue gaining a whole entire level a day (seriously, FATE exp is unreal) in the 3 hours I have to play, and by the time I can advance my main quest, I'll be far enough ahead that I won't get stalled out by the level requirements I was running into before I started FATE grinding.

I'm not saying I disagree with your post. This game is fantastic, I love the main quest story. The side quests are funny, too. The writers put a lot of thought into developing some of their NPC's, like by giving them little speech quirks, throwing in some pop culture jokes. I would advocate everyone to quest. But, some of us need FATEs so we can maximize what little time we have to play with.

Just needs to be a balance, is all.

(And then of course there's the whole alt-class leveling, but that argument has been done to death in this thread already, and I *do* advocate FATE-grinding alt classes. There's just no other efficient way to do it)