>>538815282
If you are primarily interested in the story, I'd say its worth it. The expansion storylines are excellent and very worth seeing through. You can get through almost all of it alone via NPC trusts (aside from maybe the finale of Rhapsodies). And yes, the combat starts out very slow. Endgame gets pretty fast actually but it takes a long while to get to that point. And hey, maybe you'll grow to like it and crave to do more than just see the story. It is definitely an acquired taste if you are not accustomed to older MMOs.

>>534895667
Prince of an ancient race that predates the player races of XI (like >10,000 years). They originally lived in a special place where one of the five main mothercrystals of the world was, and they had telepathic powers. The crystal got corrupted and some of them lost that telepathy ability, becoming the Kuluu and subsequently outcast. Eald'narche had a vision of restoring the crystal and "opening the gates of paradise" and started working on a plan to do this. However achieving this would basically delete the world, which the Kuluu wanted to stop, as did the terrestrial guardian avatars (primals). The Kuluu make pacts with the avatars to fight the Zilart. The resulting war has catastrophic reactions on the world, almost destroying it. This eventually leads to the player races being birthed into the world, as Vana'diel begins to slowly recover. Eald'narche and his younger brother Kam'lanaut, along with some other Zilart & Kuluu, managed to preserve themselves in stasis and eventually reawaken. Eald'narche resumes his plans from the shadows as he and his brother quietly regain power to continue their goal of opening the gates of paradise.