Critique and suggestion are one thing, and are quite welcome. Games that have a service lifespan, such an MMO's, can and should evolve and tweak things along the way. One needs to keep a delicate balance between keeping the community happy and engaged, and not heeding bad advice, however.

In regards to the WoW-issue, it's not so much that the majority of the community is hostile towards the WoW-refugees or that their opinions/suggestions aren't valid. What does set off red flags, is things that would push a major change in the direction that XIV has taken, many of those directions are what has lead to WoW's current state of affairs (Scandal not withstanding).

I played WoW from Vanilla to WotLK, then took a break during Cata and came back for Pandaria and Legion. That was when I left fully. I saw how the game went from something that was community focused, freedom of choice, and various content that applied to all manner of playstyles into a endless, mindless end game gear cycle grind. That's all it became.

The core drawing point of XIV, which many a player came to appreciate and came here for, was that you didn't need to marry the game and devote every waking moment to it, to still be relevant at max level. Catch up mechanics in place, a decent amount of raiding content with various skill levels to suit everyone's tastes, and other activities if raiding wasn't your thing.

So while WoW deviated from its original incarnation, the way the game was in the early days (Which, I will point out, is the version of the game Yoshida-san meant in his now 'infamous' quote of taking inspiration from WoW for when they were building ARR), XIV has continued to go down that same overall road of its original incarnation.

It's changes that would deviate XIV away from that overall feel, that the majority of the XIV playerbase here on the forums doesn't like. At least, from my opinion and observations.

No one would be upset to get *more* raiding content, as long as the same core structure to it holds, with the catch up mechanics and difficulty. I could even name a few things from WoW that I would LOVE to see come to XIV, such as the Transmog system. Having a catalog of items that I've "unlocked" and could freely glamour would be so, so much more preferred over having to hold onto so many items, just for glamour. I think we can also all agree, helping out XIV's PVP system would be beneficial as well.

TLDR: It's one thing to offer suggestions, and the community should welcome suggestions. However, suggestions should also be made in mind with what type of MMO XIV is, at its core. XIV hopefully will never, and should never, alternate away from its all-encompassing nature that it has to, say, become the endless gear/power grind like WoW has become.