The new player experience and how FFXIV fails as an MMO.

[Absurdity]

The 7R series has the issue of being a full series of games that are actually weird meta sequels to 7, which is such a humongous game that I'm not convinced they'll actually get through all of it. Sticking within the IP, I'd recommend the pixel remasters(or even the 3D remakes of 3 and 4) and the PS1 games first and foremost.

That's why I split it into FF games in general and modern FF games.
Some people can't get into really old graphics.

WoW's writing isn't stellar but I will say that it does at least know how to maintain a sense of intrigue and stakes in a way that XIV utterly dropped the ball on with EW by opting to terminate as many story threads as possible without actually presenting anything new in their place.

It kind of fundamentally took me out of XIV's setting once I came to the realization that nothing truly major or world-shaking is ever going to happen when we got through a literal apocalypse without any meaningful casualties or visible destruction in places we'd grown familiar with.

To be fair, both equally dropped the ball when it comes to their own lore. XIV in EW with "everything was always ancients" and WoW with...the entirety of Shadowlands.

But now that you mentioned it, the escalation of stakes became a complete mess in XIV. Up until the end of Stormblood the threat was comparatively small scale, maybe a nation in danger, at most a continent.
Then comes Shadowbringers and we suddenly need to save an entire world, even if that world is basically reduced to a few regions.
And in Endwalker we jump from that to saving the entire universe and all of existence.