Cardena
Squire
....
The questlines over the last 6 months have developed into something that only SOME small minority of players enjoy and are willing to do ....
... but in the 'real world' a lot of players just decide to skip it. Just like me.
Newer players just can't participate! Period.
We are being sifted out just like Mek2 says. I find that this is a deliberate and fairly obvious trend here and not a figment of my imagination.
I am playing this game now for 3 years. I do not think that the questline and events got any more complicated during that time. There are more now, yes, but not more difficult to do. During this time there was 1 (one) event I was unable to finish. That was my first event and I started playing almost at the same time as the event. Yes, it may be good to know the quests in advance, but there is no problem on the live servers to get the quests in advance.
BTW I am playing on Beta also for 3 years now, I am in modern era, but I did not have to skip a questline because research or province. One just has to keep something open for those cases. Well, if there are no alternatives to research now, I will have to advance to postmodern era, well, I was probably long enough in modern era ...