Originally Posted by
FaeQueenCory
No regular FF has ever demanded you be 99 to complete the story.
Usually a player will grind up to 99, but the final boss can usually be beaten from about Lv68~80, depending on the game and all of what you have access to. (Sometimes even as low as 60 even!)
Just because you may always level to 99 doesn't mean the game was designed at that way.
Here we have an MMO, which we have to account for people other than yourself.
And like others have pointed out: this isn't battle content, it's story content.
Hitou's post said it best, so there is no reason to repeat a refutation.
EDIT: And, Dasva, Shadow Lord was 50. So Nation Missions went from ~10 to 50, RotZ and CoP from 60ish to 75, at least iirc.