The story had its moments, running One Good Spider the first time remains a top MMO memory. But the story writing by and large? Hooboy...
All these alternate universes and even historical Cimerora and they all had knockoffs of the Freedom Phalanx. A little originality, maybe?
Paragon finally deciding to make an actual main storyline... starting in one of those previous alternate universes, then moving to where a C-list villain whacks the game's iconic hero and fridges another, and then said iconic hero would be replaced by the textbook definition of Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. From the same alternate universe.
If I want good storytelling, well, I still play FFXIV. City had some really good world building and it had it's moments, but honestly they got too cute like current day WoW.