I haven't played current wow for around 12 years (stopped playing during burning crusade) but after trying out classic I was surprised how alive a mmo can feel. There is so much talk in world/region chat and in groups. FF XIV' world chat is pretty much dead most of the time and in most dungeons groups you can be lucky if you get a hello back.. People really don't like to talk to strangers in this game. That's why it's difficult to really judge the community and if it's better like many people say.
Not sure what the reason for this is, but my guess would be that ff 14 has a lot of anti-social players. Furthermore this game has a very strict Tos, so people are way quicker to report someone and this leads to many people not talking at all outside of their fc's or linkshells.