Well obviously WoW and FFXIV have different artistic styles from one another. WoW is intended to look like a painting, which is a style that it actually captures very well, while FFXIV seems to be striving for hyper-realism as much as possible.
However, you are wrong to say that glowing things cannot fit in with a more realistic and lifelike art style. As I said several pages ago, a glow is nothing more than light, and there is no such thing as an art style in which light feels out of place or does not fit, not even a lifelike art style.
Uh... FFXIV is a medieval fantasy with swords and sorcery just as much as WoW is. >_>
Besides, glowing weapons can fit into absolutely any style of fantasy game, regardless of setting or visual style. Saying that there is any such thing as any setting where glowing things don't fit is absurd. Hell, we already have the lantern shield, which looks awesome and totally fits in with FFXIV's art style, thus proving that glowing things can be perfectly at home in FFXIV.
Even FFXI had a shit-ton of glowing things all over the environments, not to mention all the summons and several bosses, too.
