"Suffering through" seems odd to me. There are plenty of MMOs out there but I always viewed this as a Final Fantasy first and a MMO second. The story telling has always been a driving factor in the series.
I admit the add-ons were seriously lacking and didn't offer much, but the official expansions were well done. I loved CoP the first time through. ToAU was so fresh and had a lot of depth. Not just in the main story but you could literally walk around whitegate selecting NPCs and many gave quests that were just downright entertaining. (princess and the toad or the 3 guys and the love potion for examples).
It's true there was a sense of cop out for WotG. There was a lot of reskining of zones and mob. If you were able to get past that though you can see there was a lot of effort put into it. The cut-scenes were notches above what we had seen previously. The detailing that went into the timelines and some of the backstories and lore we always heard of were there. I must admit I'm a hardcore taru and always disliked sandy, but I did some of the Wotg Sandy quests to help some ls mates get their earrings and I loved following the young griffins.
tl;dr Love it or hate it, storytelling is at FF's core.