I recently reached Empyrea and decided to browse into my quest history to see if I could hit 130 anytime soon- then I noticed that, after Polaris, side-quests don't actually grant you any experience, just gold and miscellaneous rewards. Is there a reason for this? Is the purpose to prevent characters from over-levelling before facing the final world? The only reason I can foresee is to encourage players to actually play through the main story, but even then I'm sure I'll reach 130 well before the end of the story.