World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

[Ronduwil]

This is basically FFXIV'x endgame too.

Except for the part about grind upon grind upon grind. There's a completely optional FATE grind to collect gemstones for mounts, but there's an end in sight to it. The game doesn't maliciously timegate me in my gemstone acquisition. I could buy out all the vendors in a couple of weeks tops, and even then, if I wanted to, I could continue to grind gemstones to buy mats that I can dump onto the market to make bank. Similarly, there's a completely optional Bozjan storyline that I could participate in, but nothing is forcing me to do it. It's great for leveling other jobs, and the critical engagements can be pretty fun, but nothing is forcing me to do it. I can completely ignore Bozja and still deck myself out in 580+ gear. If I choose to do Bozja, however, I'm rewarded with lots of levels and random lootboxes.

WoW, like FFXIV, presented us with an optional anima grind at the beginning of Shadowlands. The difference is that after months of concerted grinding, I had one of my five covenant buildings complete while the others remained in early development. What was the reward for that? Honestly, nothing. It's not like anyone else could see my buildings, and the rewards for completing the buildings were lackluster at best. I hear that in subsequent patches they improved the anima grind, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out. On top of the optional anima grind, we had to repeatedly run Torghast to grind out the Soul Ash with which to purchase our legendary items. On top of that, we had to do the Maw dailies to grind out the stygia in order to purchase upgrades that made Torghast climbs faster. All in all, it was a disheartening chorefest. FFXIV doesn't present you with the level of grindception that WoW does.

[MisterNublet]

I can completely ignore Bozja and still deck myself out in 580+ gear.

Yeah... Me too.