The only thing different in FFXIV is the crafting system which is just a filler for some bad raid items, in terms of itemization. Crafting, however, is still popular for some glamour and housing items.
Story quests there are nice but you blow through them in a couple of hours. So other than that you either play to level up alt specs, dailies, or you do dungeons and raids.
World of Warcraft became big because of its raiding scene. Doesn't matter if the vast mayority did it or not, but having a high cieling to look at keeps many people interested, even if they never reach it. Everything you did in vanilla was to prepare you to raid. The game was focused then and continued to be through the years, with some other less important activities. Just because the average player took a very long time in grinding each step of the progression system, didn't mean the progression system wasn't designed with the ultimate goal of raiding.
Blizzard will introduce something unique to raiding, in both power and transmog options. They wont throw it away because they also know that it's the only thing they have above their competition.
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The problem with that appeared because of the titanforge system, not because of the tier pieces themselves. I think what they will do is that the highest ilvl azerite pieces will drop from mythic raiding.