Another thing that may not have been mentioned here is how crafting in FFXIV is always relevant (and isn’t restricted like it is in WoW), with the ability to craft fantastic progression gear if you maintain it. You can be every crafter and gatherer on a single character and use this to pull your character back or provide progression sets, and even compete with the raid-tier gear.
However, you obviously won’t compete with Savage gear, because obviously, harder content should reward better gear, but you can certainly craft what you need to begin that difficulty tier.
Casual content will provide casual rewards. I have to laugh at how a game with various reward systems for players to focus on magically makes it super casual or for ‘people who can’t handle lack of reward’, in a game where if you want to best, you still have to tackle Savage or even Unreal content (which is infinitely harder than anything WoW chucks out). Let’s not forget that you can also play EVERY CLASS on a single character, thus a more stringent reward system would be crippling for people who actually do want to play and expand on more than a single class – unlike WoW, where you have to roll new characters to play different classes and they can all individually tackle reward systems, which often becomes a timesink.
It’s not a case of showering people with rewards, and people who claim a lack of catch-up system must clearly be joking when almost all tiers involve uncapped currencies that provide sets while you work on capped currencies or hard drops from normal/allied raids, trails, etc – not to mention new dungeon tiers and crafting recipes that can get you back on track (across multiple classes) in one day, or even one evening if you’re hardcore.
Both systems have their merits and you simply have to accept that no matter which one you discuss, there will always be people who aren’t satisfied in one way or another.
As far as WoW is concerned (as someone who won’t be doing much raiding this expansion), my one regret was not doing some casual PvP to eek out some il200’s to fill the gap while I spam Mythic+. Meanwhile, in FFXIV, you have immediate access to great startup gear as a crafter (which can be improved to higher tiers), alongside uncapped and capped token options to constantly improve your character (whether you decide to go for the hardest content or not).
You still have ample space and incentive to push higher, but not as stringent or as RNG-feeling as WoW outside of Conquest, so while WoW might give the illusion of reward thanks to this newfound rarity of drops, I will always prefer a FFXIV’s system where there is an obvious ‘better horizon’ to reach for with far more stepping blocks to help you get there over time, as you will always feel like your character is moving forward until you hit the peak, which will then expand after every few story-patch tiers, but that’s just me.