I ultimately agree with your assessment. WoW is a very enjoyable game in its own right. Somethings about it are advantageous (I particularly find the engine for FF rather annoying). I wrote what I dislike here; Ffxiv: ARR the new King of MMORPG - #12 by anon40921684
There are other parts of the game which do satisfy my wants and desires as a player.
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The story from the get-go does feel more enjoyable and involved. Even as loremaster in WoW I don’t think I’ve matched the same experience (though I liked BC/WoD and Classic ones a ton).
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Lack of sharding is actually amazing. You will run into people on your server and natural interaction in that sense I wish we could get back in retail (classic WoW is an option but… I like retail gameplay more).
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A friendly community; people on both sides I’ve noticed are really kind, but kindness from strangers is a fair bit more commonplace there. People who do a well wishing at the start of a pug.
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I’d contend your assessment of classes. As a dancer main I know my personal dps is not going to ever parse the same (and FF class logs prove the same) but I also know that due to the way the class works I will increase the damage of another class by an amount enough that I am more than sufficient. WoW misses that level of nuance in terms of its class design and the concept of a ‘support + dps’ class is a pretty novel concept here.
I enjoy both games but it is understandable the appeal of FFXIV and I’d love for Blizzard to improve on its game.