How good is the game engine of FFXIV?

[Astarotha]

part of why you think animation and textures look 'better' in wow is because wows hyper exaggerated art style allows for sweeping unnatural levels of movement to not look out of place, where if ff14 characters gestured like that youd think they were having seizures, and for textures again the hyper exaggeration and alien skin tones it inherited from wc3 is why its able to fudge a lot with anatomy and shadow, it literally does come down to art style

and for poly count woes, go watch speakers of hydaelyns rise and fall series for some of the problems that can arise due to high poly counts in an mmo, ie flowerpots taking the same amount of resources to render as a character