It's not obvious there is an abbreviated quest option along the eternal winter opening. 

Why not just have us opt in when we create the character instead of having to fumble around doing story? Or better. Let us just pay to turn the whole quest line off. I'd give you ten dollars for that every season.

I hate story. I love DISCOVERY or INVESTIGATION into facts and lore. That's great. Story is usually asking me to care about someone I cannot. I can't even read fantasy books or watch TV shows that long for the same reason. These are fictional people pushing a narrative usually. I might DISCOVER I care. Like with Magnus quest. That was great. We were DISCOVERING things about the world through those experiences, but the experiences were a kind of gameplay. Finding the little kids singing in Olvia and what happens to the Black Spirit. That was great. It's a DISCOVERY! We can INVESTIGATE that further. Being taken aside by one of the council members in Calpheon to be warned about the people infultrating the Elionian religious caste. Great stuff! It's a discovery. Things like that I truly love. Wandering through a story text to story text. It's very hard to get behind that. Another example:

In the Kingkiller Chronicles this spider attacks a man very early in the story. Up that point you've had no incidation that there is anything fantastical in that world. The introduction of the spider is a mystery because it's HUGE. The size of a wagon wheel. The villagers are very ignorant of the wider world. They mostly subsist on rumors and stories. What follows is a kind of 'fact checking' that is really more like 'reaffirmation of bias'. Is it a spider? Yes or no? Well it does LOOK like a spider. Except it has no mouth or eyes and its insides are goo. The size of it makes them think it is a demon. When they attempt to use what they know to confirm it if is a demon or not those attempts return with an affirmative. Meanwhile, you get the impression that one of the people there is just leading the others on into their already self-reinforcing bias. 

The point is, when we are PLAYING A GAME we tend to want to do more of that. Play. And game. Personal liberties and then structures to utilize those liberities. Story gets in the way of this. It's like a hook in your mouth. You get reeled along and the fisherman at the other end vaguly promises to pull the hook out after he gets some time jerking on the line. 

The same issue takes off in the Kingkiller Chronicles, too.  After leading you on into thinking the story is going to be a mystery novel where you have to constantly check presentations of information against further presentations as the events of the story unfolds... it instead flips into the typical Western trope of making a hero out of a villain. The main character. You never do find out anything more about the spider. It was just the hook to get you to read the rest of the book in hopes that it would eventually get back to where it started off. 

I say this with a lot of reverence though. I deeply enjoy Black Desert's world and the on going story as it unfolds. We're left to come to our own conclusions about a lot of things and it's a real puzzle trying to get all the pieces together. The deep past. The present. What exactly are the threats were facing. Can we rid ourselves of the Black Spirit? Should we? Is it just another of the God Type beings or it is something much more dangerous like Tolkien's Melkor? What do these possible conclusions tell us about the wider universe we're in? It's all very good. And very good because we've been left to build up quite a lot of head-cannon by now. Rather like when you didn't remove Soariing Arts for years and we, as players, invented an entire school of magic and fun into the world as result of it. You really should have respected stuff like that as good fun. It wasn't hurting anyone and you could easily have built it into the game as a limited, but perfected and supported mobility.

Anyway, it should be really obvious what path we're on when we start a Season Character. It's like this from the beginning though. Nothing is terribly obvious. It's always a big of gamble to start a new Seasonal character. Will it go right this time or be giant waste of time? It's never really clear. So, if in the future could you please just have a box to tick? Abbreviated quest path or Extended? 

Thanks

I am confused, is there no big window that doesn't let you progress until you pick wether you want the story or not on the eternal winter questline?

No, only the balenos-serendia-calpheon questline is skipable.

It's also not realy an option, because if you choose to do eternal winter instead of balenos and then skip the questline, you are stuck on a mountain with monster zones way to high for you. So what are you gone do to level up?