I love Final Fantasy XIVs animations. They are fantastic and look the part.

Having played both WoW and SWTOR. I thoroughly dislike their combat system, there isn't nearly enough emphasis on animations and player's barely give a shit to how their character acts in battle, their eyes are just fixed to the User Interface cool-downs. World of Warcraft's animation style is cartoon, and thus character's can get away with moving their body at ridiculous speeds (reference of your first link), both XI and XIV still have a set of human weight to the animations that make them play out their part. Much like Demon and Dark Souls, weighted animations make the combat stand apart. Having a player-wide particle effect (referencing your second link), while it is "cool-looking" such particle effects on all characters, especially if it can be done in town; will drastically affect the performance of some machines, and once again, it suits WoW due to it's artistic style.

Final Fantasy XI and XIV on the other hand are much more slower combat systems that rely on the building of TP, long cast times, and some truly beautiful effects to follow once a player can disperse that TP or cast that spell. I think what you're asking to happen will change the game quite thoroughly, the animation lock is the only issue present, there is no need to change the current animations.