Not sure if we can really draw any comparisons, back then WoW was an industry revolutionary, while FFXIV is a good MMO, but just "yet another MMO", this in an era where Korean developers are shipping several f2p MMOs per year.
What WoW did back then compared to the older, more time consuming MMOs is what earned them a large loyal playerbase that will keep coming back even after they quit, just to try new content.
In the end streamlining the genre was a good idea, this game is trying to achieve the same so I expect it to stay up for a long time.
