One thing I'm noticing is the world seems a little underpopulated for opening weekend for a new expansion. Not sure 3 instances are really needed, not having much issue with queues. Maybe the added servers are helping spread players out.
I decided to turn off all my chats (FC & Linkshells, Say/Tell/Shouts) and am just going slowly at my own pace. Everyone's already so far ahead and clearing the MSQ and Ex bosses that I'm finding it better to just ignore everyone else's progression and just play at my own pace. Also I get super burnt out on MSQ quest after MSQ quest in FF14, so I try to gather some collectibles and do some sidequests in each spot as I move along to space it out.
On the neutering of job quests, my thoughts before seeing these lvl.80 quests are:
1) Their excuse is kinda bullshit, if they some were filler, it's because they couldn't come up with anything good and that's on them. Also the production values were already fairly good in HW/Stormblood, so I dunno what they're talking about needing better production values.
2) Not having it piecemealed as you progress in the new world is disappointing because like for Dark Knight this would have been a really interesting location for Fray to comment on as you progress in it.
3) Even if the lvl.80 job quests end up being pretty good stories almost as much as the previous job stories, crafters/gatherers don't have lvl.80 job quests so they've still cut them out. From what I gather there are still job questlines for those starting at lvl.70, but they're merging miner/bot, blacksmith/armorer/gsm, etc... so it's still ditching the individual stuff which is lame. And Miners and Botanists are nothing alike story-wise :X Fisher still looks to get its own storyline because no other job can combine with fishing, thankfully.