Yeah it took me ages to just stop with the mmo grind mindset. Do a bit of story when you feel like and just exist in a weird world. I'm at something like 1000 hours if I remember right and still haven't gotten to the latest stuff
Combat doesn’t really get good until level 80. It’s such a slow burn. But the reason you need to do the 24 man raids is because it’s super important for the later story. It’s the only time they make you do an alliance raid. They don’t make you do any thing except dungeons and trials afterwards, which 99% can be done with their AI.
Luckily, the raids have a lot of people all the time and they’re so easy with maxed out level 50 stats.
Yeah I was annoyed when I found out I had to do the raids, but once I got started with them I had fun. Now that I've gotten past the parts where they're slightly crucial for the story I see why they make you do it too.