I read that OGCD argument and unlike most people I did force myself to be bored for a while until I got a few OGCD abilities. Tried Bard since I heard they get plenty of OGCD abilities in their songs and some range attacks and even tried Puglist to make the combat a little faster and closer to WoW thanks to their greased lightning. And it's still dreadfully slow in comparison to
pre-BfA GCD changes. Not to mention making the argument of "I know you don't like it but if you go through hours of something boring
maybe you'll like it after that!" is really bad. XIV's combat is just not very fun for a lot of people who are used to faster pace, specially when the beginning is even slower.
Pre-BfA? What about now?
As for Art, you can't tell people why a game's Art is better than another. That's something entirely subjective. You may think BC zones make your eyes bleed while someone else might think they are some of the best zones ever made as places like Shadowmoon, Zangar and Nagrand really make you feel like you are in some fantasy alien world that literally exploded and came crashing together. The design of Outland is superb for what it is trying to convey.
It's a shame I can't access my old account. I could link that blog entry I did. The Outland zones really look like alien zones. And the relatively low number of zones in FFXIV is something I lament. But TBC zones have 2 dimensional shrubs and other things that make them look horrible compared to the more recent ones. Since the game rarely asks you to revisit old zones, it's easy to say the art ages well.
Another thing that's super subjective is the story. I personally loved as far as I got. It starts as typical FF fantasy with crystals and summons and then suddenly turns into political machinations and world building. It reminds me of going from the original Star Wars films to the prequels. It's not hard to see why a lot of people hate it and why a lot love it.
Actually WoW is closer to the prequels. It is an incoherent mess that keeps contradicting itself. I can see people not liking the story, but I have a harder time imagining people actually preferring the wow story. Just compare Alphinaud to Anduin.
And this is the opinion of someone who loves FFXIV. I played the shit out of that game, I loved the crafting and the story, loved spending time in the Gold Saucer and collecting Triple Triad cards and the dungeons were at least pretty, and with the super slow gameplay
I could actually just look around while pressing a button every 2 and a half seconds . Game's great, but not for everyone at all, and much less objectively better than WoW that literally only focuses on combat gameplay and comes ahead of XIV for most people because of that.
Also Gaius literally did nothing wrong.