Final Fantasy 14 Players trying WOW?

[Shurrikhan]

Basically, FFXIV values your time by giving you the freedom to play other games at any time while not feeling like you won't be able to raid when you return.

Does it, though? The fall-off on blind/learner parties and the increase in ilvl requirements per week past a given raid tier's release are more significant here than in WoW, GW2, or the like. Moreover, considerably more value is locked behind weekly caps, especially for players who cannot yet (be that due to work schedules, learner party scarcity, or having already fallen behind on the ilvl grind as requirements exceed what can be met by crafted gear) do Savage.

This is currently not the case in WoW, where they give you a constant stream of necessary busywork that you must be able to complete all the time in order to be able to do the content that you want to do.

You could get by with doing none of that busywork more easily there than you could with skipping your Astrology caps alone here, though?

in FFXIV you are not trapped in this grind treadmill.

But, you are. You absolutely are. Ilvl requirements, no matter how much you wish to solely blame the community for them, make maintaining one's place on that treadmill a necessity while each tier of gear lasts for less time here than it does in WoW (largely due to a lack of unique gear pieces that can synergize with particular kits for greater relative longevity, much like what we've seen among some XI pieces).

Worse, unlike the seasonal currency caps of WoW, XIV current-tier currency follows strict weekly caps, not allowing one to make up for any week's time lost to overtime work or week+-long rotations, etc.

In fact, Yoshi-P even encourages players to take breaks from the game because he understands that the player's time is valuable.

Since the game's release in 2004, WoW's load-in screen has likewise advised taking breaks, sometimes from the game entirely, as not to get burned out or lose that sense of adventure. Both encouragements are irrelevant to the games' designs, though. The only thing of import there is how much content desirable to a given player is likely to be, in practice and in context, closed off to someone as a result of declining that grind for some period of time. Right now, that punishment is worse in XIV than in WoW. (That's not to say that WoW doesn't have its own problems, such as unnecessarily long initial investment time to actually go and do content, much like if we had to go through a 6.1 to 6.5's worth of MSQ just to go and do even floors 1-4 of Pandaemonium, but the cost for taking a break there is typically less than here.)

WoW, on the other hand, gives you a bunch of tasks and chores that must be done - see all the videos on youtube on unlocking flying in Zerith Mortis, for example, and compare that to how easy it is to unlock flying in Endwalker.

Flight is not a necessity, though, nor is it relevant to anything other than doing those same "tasks and chores" in that same zone that, themselves, unlock flight in that zone. The system of flight unlocks simply causes the bonuses it allows for to become quicker to acquire around the same time those rewards would otherwise see too diminished of returns (as you've already collected all the base gear and upgrading it gets increasingly expensive) to be worth doing. It therefore increases options: you can simply stop there or you can make use of the increased efficiency to continue upgrading items as an alternative to doing raiding, etc., if you want raid-equivalent gear but are too anxious or unfortunately scheduled to actually raid.
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This character is currently some portion through Stormblood, lvl 70, and I can't fly there. I also can't fly in Heavensward, because I didn't take the time to explore every single nook and cranny of the world to get the currents. I don't even know how many I need. I have no idea how long it will take to get flying, just that I really can't get it until I don't need it so much anymore.

Sorry for the edit; I ran out of daily posts.

Go to Actions & Traits -> Travel -> Aether Currents. It'll let you know how many quests and nodes you still need for the given zone. With some few exceptions (e.g., the Lochs), getting flight for a zone is a quick, painless process. The system merely makes you finish the zone's MSQ and explore most of its notable sites before allowing you to ignore any and all of its topography.

If you haven't been using your Aether Compass already, note that it is now weirdly hidden behind /collection. I'd recommend click-and-dragging it to your hotbar(s) for easy use. It'll tell you how far the nearest node is and in what direction. I'd just hit it periodically as you follow the MSQ, at first grabbing only what's close, and finish them off while doing the final side-quests necessary for flight unlock in the zone.

Getting flying here is far far better than it's been in WoW since they stopped using flight training and switched to Pathfinder in WoD.

Quicker, not necessarily better.

The goals are alike in both cases; you can't get flight in either game until you're done with their respective zones. It's merely a difference of WoW considering the open world still a real part of the game even after you've finished the zone's main questline. After several hours of doing world content across the expansion's zones, you have your flight because that's about the point at which they determined you've experienced all even those who like open world stuff would care to experience in full and you're effectively "done" with those zones. In both cases, flight is essentially a post-content bonus, not considered a necessity for while said content is still relatively new or in play.