Gamerant lists MMORPG's with best stories, FFXIV #6, WoW #1, uhh

[Absurdity]

Ok, so I feel like you're mixing two things here: being part of the story and being part of the action. Yes, you may feel like you spend more time in the action in WoW, but that doesn't make your character any more part of the story. You may think that FFXIV spends too much time talking, but at least they're talking with and to your character, as opposed to WoW where your character may suddenly disappear all of a sudden in important scenes as if your character was never there in the first place.

I think WoW has slowly made some changes recently to make your character actually has some presence in the story, but when player characters have NPC stand ins (see Legion class hall leaders/representatives as examples), it's very obvious that the player character isn't actually incorporated into the story.

I mean let's be honest here. Yes XIV incorporates your character into the story in the sense that we're the "Protagonist" but most of the time that means being the idiot that gets sent in to kill things or retrieve things, we do not come up with any plans, strategies, etc, we're just the one-man army with the magical power to beat up people better than anyone else. I don't see too much of a difference between that and being "random goon nr. 347" who gets sent in because they're better at beating someone up than most people. Granted WoW doesn't do that any better but it doesn't exactly help that we're a silent protagonist who doesn't just lack voice acting but literally doesn't say anything most of the time.