How does FF14 compare to WoW? (And other MMOs)

[Ralph2449]

In WoW a player can solo from level 1- 60 (current level cap) and never join a group if that is their wish

That is a matter of personal definitions really, joining a group through an automated group finder gets you into a group where you dont need to talk or communicate , they might as well be NPCs and you are there to just do what your role requires.

I personally define "forced grouping" when you are actually forced to actively deal with people(talk, explain why you play X) you dont like because it is the only way to get decent rewards, aka WoW, where if you want decent gear you have to deal with the most elitist, tryhard metaslave players in existence which are obsessed over raider IO score and meta specs and FotS combs, and unlike an automated group finder you cant simply ignore them and pretend they are NPCs because there's a good chance of wiping but you have no choice because all the cool rewards and locked behind that content.

Upon reaching level cap, the solo player still has a lot of activities available to them.

I wouldnt really say that for WoW, your main activities would be seeing the story which is timegated at the start, then mindlessly farming world quest to get rep for factions which may or may not have anything interesting and old content.

Gear progression is gone for solo players the moment you reach 200ilvl, and the hilarious part is they literally put recommended ilvl to 225 for layer 8 twisting corridors while no solo players will ever reach that. (And yeah I know you dont rly need that, I did it with 205 but that is still what the average person sees)
You could try professions but they have been gutted to uselessness so honestly, WoW does not respect solo players else we would see actually decent rewards for solo play, the hardest to achieve solo reward would be TC 8 yet half the layers give 0 rewards because blizzard cant even be bothered thinking of good rewards for content that isnt l33t groups, hell the mount you get from layer 8 is only rly useful for making grinds faster.