After watching the Folding Ideas video I was 100% sure I will never come back to this game. Toxiest years of my life. I'm glad for many experiences and friends WoW gave me, but I am really over it and I love being a filthy casual in FFXIV.
I left in February of 2021, but at the time it was competent but unexceptional. Rival Wings and Conquest(?) were the two big battle types, and I think overall Rival Wings was more interesting, while Conquest usually devolved to a round robin rotation of objectives or endless stalemates unless you had a competent caller directing your nation's team. I didn't like it at all, but Rival Wings was always dead outside of events. Rival Wings was like a "MOBA mode" plus vehicles, so a big thing was objective and resource management so you could push an organised vehicle fleet down one of the lanes. Engagements were also typically smaller than in Conquest.
5v5s were very unbalanced but fun for casual play due to job variety, although the high end was being griefed by some notorious hackers around November of last year (which is when I lost touch with the PVP community on Twitter).
In terms of activity levels, I could basically always get a Conquest match or a 5v5 match, but I basically finished my 5v5 achievements and then only ever played Rival Wings when there were enough players to start a match. They've recently introduced a reward track for all PVP, so maybe Rival Wings has finally seen its Revival Wings.
I can't speak for FFXIV, but if you want pvp in an MMO you might give guild wars 2 a try. It's got 5v5 pvp matches where everyone is on an even playing field. It's available in the free to play version, and you can go into it right after the tutorial if you want, don't even have to do leveling.
There's also a large scale pvp mode called world vs world where you have three teams of hundreds of players fighting over territory. That one uses non-equalized stats so it's an end game thing, but it's a lot of fun!
I fondly remember my wow days and friends. But it doesn't fit into my life any more. It's too all-consuming. Plus, it feels less like an adventure and more like a theme park. Everything is so tidy and precise with carefully measured dopamine hits at regular intervals.
There's no getting back the things I'm nostalgic for. Even if all the people came back and I got back into my guild, I have kids and obligations. I don't want my kids to hear me say something like I can't attend their play because it's raid night, or watch me rush to finish daily quests before bed like any of that shit matters.
I'm still casual friends with some of the folks I met through wow. But I'm done with it.
Daily quests, login rewards, any other mechanic that wants to dictate when I should play, all that ruined my relation with a lot of games. I actively try to ignore them nowadays. If my line of reasoning is I should play a little more because the reward is around the corner and will be gone tomorrow, I'll let the most precious opportunity go to waste to protect my mental health.
Blizz always has great ideas and then falls flat in execution. I say this as a WoW player. It's ok. If they can pull off these ideas, which they absolutely have not proven, then this could be good. I remain skeptical.
Whether you are a current player ... or maybe you jumped off the WoW train a few expansions ago, now is the time to come home
Sorry, but I left this abusive relationship years ago for a reason. Not coming back. I am also not sure if multiple expansions in a short time frame will be what the users want that are fine with going back every 2-3 years for a new expansion for three month and quit, if there is not enough time inbetween to forget why they stopped playing. Just saying.
And for the story side of things, they have messed up everything to the point that I do not even want to read about the story anymore. I am just done with the world and the lore and the graphics. There are so many interesting worlds and ideas out there, so many great games. I have fond memories of the friends I made ingame, but I also regret the massive amount of time I spent in one single game. It wasn't healthy for me.