FF14 isn't perfect but it is a sold game. It's design isn't going to suit everyone but it never will. People want different things in games and there is always a compromise.

FF14's story actually has very few plotholes. The explanation for things can sometimes not be obvious but it is there if you go around investigate a bit. Case in point is the end of 2.X. You pretty much could walk around Ul'dah because the people who recognised you either didn't believe the rumors (your a famous hero after all), weren't willing to risk themselves challenging you (your a famous hero after all) or just didn't know what you look like. Eorzea doesn't exactly have TV so most Eorzeans would only have a rough description of what the WoL looked like and even then they are probably expecting someone 8 feet tall and clad in armour of pure light. Stories tend to exaggerate the truth.

WoW has pretty different raiding. Yoshi P has said before he would like to do more tiers of difficulty for the raiding and broaden that content but his team currently lacks the staff to do it and not because of lack of hiring. Its just hard to find Battle designers of high enough calibre who speak Japanese, are willing to work in Japan and have the experience to integrate quickly into the FF14 team. FF14 does have a roughly 15 week content patch cycle so it offsets size of updates with frequency.