If you are a new player, you have to progress through the MSQ (main story questline) to reach 80. The MSQ alone doesn't give you enough EXP to reach 80, so you will need to do a few extra dungeon runs (sidequests in FFXIV give you a pitiful amount of EXP and generally aren't worth doing for leveling, only do them because you want more lore or if you're a completionist). You will reach level 80 a few minutes before completing the 5.0 MSQ (the end of the base Shadowbringers story).
Also, in order to complete the MSQ, you will need to complete a lot of dungeons (4 man instances) and trials (8 man instance with just one boss fight), so you will spend a lot of time queued for dungeons and trials. If you are a tank or a healer, your queue is generally 5 minutes or less, usually instant. If you are DPS, expect to wait upwards of 5-10 minutes each time you queue. And since then there are A LOT of dungeons and trials you need to complete to complete the MSQ, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting in queue if you queue as DPS. Fortunately, you can change jobs at will in FFXIV, and you can progress through the MSQ as any job (including tanks and healers; this isn't like WoW where if you do quests as a tank or healer you do pitiful amounts of damage. Tanks and healers in FFXIV do quite a lot of damage so questing doesn't really take longer as a non-DPS job).
Most of your time progressing through the MSQ will be:
- Traveling to the next destination
- Queued for a dungeon or trial
Earlier this year, I created a brand new character and tried to speedrun the MSQ. I skipped most of the cutscenes, and aside from job quests and the Crystal Tower storyline (which will be required in the revamped MSQ starting next week), I didn't do any other content in the game. I played as an Arcanist, which is a DPS job, but at level 30 Arcanist unlocks Summoner (DPS) and Scholar (Healer). Leveling up one levels up the other. So when it came time to queue for dungeons, I would switch to Scholar and my queue would pop instantly.
My timeplayed stats were:
- *I forgot to post my screenshots for 3.55 and 4.0 /timeplayed*
(This is my /timeplayed skipping cutscenes)
Once hit 5.0, I began watching the cutscenes again, and I started doing the sidequests for the lore, and then I got sidetracked with other stuff, so the furthest I reached was the second half of Rak'tika Great Wood. It's hard for me to judge how much time 5.0 would take if you ONLY did the MSQ, because on my first playthrough I did every sidequest except the Dwarves and the Sahagin, so my first playthrough was like 50-60+ hours. So we will low ball it (5.0 MSQ gameplay time) to 20 hours.
So gameplay wise, if you skip cutscenes, 2.0 to 5.0 completion is about 100 hours.
Next, we need to account for cutscene times. The Youtube channels, Gamer's Little Playground and Eji, have compilation of all of the cutscenes and NPC dialogue scenes in the MSQ.
- 2.5 & 2.56 4 hours 56 minutes
53.5 hours thus far.
After 3.3, I can't find videos of all of the cutscenes including the NPC dialogue. I compared pre 3.3 videos and found that the videos that included the NPC dialogue were at least an hour as long as the videos that included pure cutscenes - about double the length. So from now on I am taking the numbers of the videos that are pure cutscenes and doubling the length).
So after 3.3, you're looking at about 49 more hours of cutscenes.
53.5 + 49 = 102.5 hours.
So in total you're looking at about 100 hours of cutscenes from the time you start the game to when you beat 5.0.
So 80 hours of gameplay time + 100 hours of cutscenes = 180 hours total from 2.0 through 5.0 completion.
Bear in mind, that this was my second playthrough. I knew where to go and how to optimize my travel times, etc. And I queued as a healer to skip queue times. If you're going in blind, and if you queue as a DPS, then I expect it'll take you another 10-20 hours.