Final Fantasy 14 does a phenomenal job at story telling and story immersion compared to World of Warcraft. They make you feel part of the story rather than something you just need to go through. I tried to identify 3 points which World of Warcraft can possibly integrate into their next iterations.
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3:40 Y'Shtola is actually a Conjurer the class that turns into White Mage, Arcanist/Summoner uses the Grimore books and Scholar the other job Arcanist turns into uses Codex Books.
I feel like giving you a tip, don't keep your own debuffs (enfeeblements) all the way up top on your screen, those will actually make a diffrence between life and death in quite a few situations, always keep those in sight. Sometimes you'll have to take split second decisions based on those. Also, I'll add one more thing but this is pretty basic so you might know already, but keeping the enemy's cast bar (yellow bar above enemy hp that shows up when they cast something) in sight is also crucial, especially when tanking; if you go in hud layout you can "detach" it from enemy HP and make it its own individual hud element that you can move around. If you start reading the names of the attacks the enemy is casting, you'll know when a tankbuster is coming so you can soak the damage with a skill, or if the boss is about to cast aoe damage you can pop your party wide protection beforehand, OR in endgame/optional content, bosses will often do mechanics point blank with no telegraph, the only way to avoid those is looking at the enemy's cast bar.
I've never played WoW, so I can't speak on that. What I can say though is that FF14 has done an INCREDIBLE job in terms of story, lore, immersion, characters, and world-building. On many occasions, I have found myself going out of my way to do simple things like exploring zones, doing side quests just for lore, talking to random NPCs simply to hear what they have to say, and so on. I did these things out of GENUINE curiosity and thirst for more lore, something that no other MMORPG I've played has ever spurred me to do. Hell, I rarely do these things in most of the singleplayer RPGs that I play today.
What I've learned from FF14 is that story and immersion can go a long way in an MMORPG. Having a solid story and world as a foundation can make you so much more excited for new zones, story, raids, dungeons, events, etc.
In my personal opinion, WoW could also finally admit that player character is a main hero of the story proper. Or at least important enough to stand alongside with all canonical characters in cutscenes and do important stuff there. I understand that some may not like it, and I've seen argument "You do understand that your story is identical to other players story" and I agree, but this is what most videogames about. FF makes player character the main character in the story. I don't see any reasons why WOW couldn't do the same. In fact, I think that they have even more potential to work with – player character could have different story elements depending on the side you start with, race or even class. FF in this regard is way more stiff at the concept – being JRPG at the core it is way more linear in some of its concepts like story developments. WoW, on the other hand could've gone in a different direction, as more western RPG.
Also Blizzards could've give their characters in WOW some time for proper development.
Hourchefant, Yugiri, Estinien (especially if you start as Lancer/Dragoon) even Biggs and Wedge as side character, play minor roles in the story, being there for some time until time comes for them to shine. We get to know them way in advance and get to understand these people. This is why phrases like "smile better suits a hero" hit hard when they hit. It's because you know these people and you grow to care about them.
I cannot say that FF goes as well with enemies, but as far as I was playing, Zenos was pretty good classical villain. And he doesn't come off as "Noone from nowhere", as well as the ascians – all of them are well defined antagonists and they develop along with other characters.
I do believe that issues with the story that WOW has, can be fixed, but not by blatantly copying Final Fantasy, but by looking at how it plays to its strengths in storytelling and utilizing game's own strong points and playing with them.
The difference is that you are the main character in FF14. You are stalling with Hien until YOU arrive, thats cool. If you were playing Thrall, who would he be stalling for? Your character in WoW is a "champion" but not the main character. In WoW the main characters are Thrall, Jiana, Anduin etc, and you are just there to watch the show.
Even in side content they still put effort to incorporate that technique. I recently just did Stormblood Raid (The 4 Lords) and I had to fight someone together with some NPCs and one of the NPC was an Arcanist but when she summoned her Carbuncle, her Carb didn't listen to anything she said and in fact "dismisses" itself. LoL. The NPC then panicked and ran around like a maniac trying to dodge (mostly failing to) the mechanics with funny dialogs ("Your betrayal is punishable by death! MY death! *while running around). What's awesome is that the schtick that her Carb doesn't listen to her was introduced in ARR and that was the second time I see her like that. So they remembered her "arc" from all the way back to ARR. LoL
At one point, WoW did have quests where you controlled an NPC, and I remember thinking, early in my FF14 time, how nice it would be if that same feature was added. For example, during Legion, I remember several quests where you play as Illidan. There were others of a similar nature. I don't know if they've been removed, or if WoW's current focus on "just get to top level and play the current expansion, everything in the middle can be ignored" causes people to miss these.
WoW has done quests where you play as NPCs – the one in Wrath with Arthas vs Illidan https://youtu.be/582ksGMBz9s
The FFXIV quests are more interesting because you have more investment.
WoW story is fucking confusing and alot of ?????????? to try to make sense with alot of retcons, what pisses me off is WoW is the kingdom hearts for Blizzard. U need to play the old games , read comic books ,novels/books and Q&A from developers for lore that are missing . U want to know how sylvanas able to beat the lich king bolvar and undead armies by herself? Buy 5 WoW books from Amazon and read how. Just like kingdom hearts ,ppl love the characters and the lore but the story is trash Doo Doo just like WoW. WoW devs never great story writers , this is bullshit since vanilla to now , I am sorry but this is a fact when they rush their stories,retcon them whenever a story to them is related and wasted so many lore material away. I have only cared about wotlk story because I played warcraft 3 ,not cuz of WoW story leading up to the lich king. .