Soldato
You're talking about a vocal minority of players but ignoring the many other types of people that play MMOs. If all you see is the trash players then maybe you're playing with the wrong crowd.
I'm not saying it as a positive or negative, I'm just stating that overall, in comparison to 2004 and before the gaming community as a whole, and especially the MMO community is very different. I mentioned nothing of trash players, I think the players have gotten much, much better as comparing pre-2005 content to today's content the mechanics alone are night and day and significantly more complex. I simply pointed out that a small reason that some people (not necessarily me) don't like content being gated in 2021 is that it's comparatively more (in my experience) difficult to find groups that aren't super-picky or wanting to go a thousand miles an hour.
Overall, I have issues with the game, but not that story is gated, although I don't have time to spent a lot of time searching for groups these days, it means it's slower for me - which isn't a bad thing.