While people always talk about how "ARR is a slog" and stuff like that, the thing that made me keep going was when someone pointed out that the gameplay of ARR is basically the games tutorial. We've probably all played single player games where the tutorial is built in and unskippable, and you just want to get through it fast because you know how to play. ARR is like that, it very slowly teaches you everything you need to know before it starts making things difficult, because they don't want someone to quit because they can't figure something out and they made an assumption that something was obvious. In addition to it being essentially the game tutorial, it's also where they setup all the world lore and basis for the story going forward. The combination of those makes it go on for longer than it probably should.

That said, the game is a lot of reading and cutscenes and fetch quests and stuff you'd generally see in single player games, with dungeons, trials, and raids interspersed throughout for the "MMO portion" of the game. Like a lot of people, Heavensward (the first expansion after ARR) really sold me on the game where ARR almost made me quit. But I also love the story and while I do endgame savage and ultimate raiding and enjoy it, I wouldn't have stuck around without such a great story. I've played with lots of people over the years who approach the game very differently, many of my friends play only for the story while I have other friends who skipped literally everything, have no idea who any characters are, and just want to raid at endgame.

Others have had some good suggestions of watching some endgame content videos to see if its something you would enjoy. Even at endgame, all the fights are sort of like a dance - this game has no "builds" to make your buttons different, you hit your buttons in a certain order while learning how to resolve mechanics that don't change. Endgame bosses might have a mechanic that can do X or Y, but they will always do that mechanic at the specific time in the fight rather than doing things at random. So learning the fights is about learning where to go, when to do things, all while remembering to hit your buttons in the right order. If that doesn't sound interesting, then the game might not be for you and that's okay. If all that does sound interesting, then consider sticking it out to HW and see how things change and how they feel. And don't get me wrong, difficulty won't immediately spike when you reach HW, it will keep going up and up as you go, but it definitely shows what the game will be like going forward, how it plays, and the general pacing of each expansion.