I have been an FF fan for 23 years, XIV meets my expectations of what an online FF would be like. That, and me actually missing the trinity system is why I'm enjoying it.
What drove me to GW2 was that I was tired of the DKP system and the gear treadmill, not necessarily the story, but I did end up liking it. What I like about FFXIV is that it plays like a single player FF game, you get similar story exposition that can be done solo and for key parts of the story, mainly bosses and going into dungeons, you have to party up. The traditional FF classes fight the trinity tropes to a T. Because of how they handle their story, attunements didn't feel intrusive to me. The entry end game gear progression loot system is handled through a token system. You run dungeons and bosses, you get a certain amount of "tomestones" which you turn into a vendor to get gear. When you start raiding it's a bit modified. The hard mode content (extreme and then savage) will drop actual gear as well as various boss specific tokens that everyone just rolls need on. Parties are 8 persons, and boss will drop 5 of the tokens. When you get into the 24 person raids, loot is still divided by 8 people. Usually requires 4, 2, or 1 pieces of each token to acquire a single slot of gear. So unless you're concerned about getting BiS immediately, it's not too cumbersome getting adequately geared up. I can't say whether SE is handling content updates better than ANet.
When I started FFXIV the last Heavensward patch dropped, so when I leveled up, all the story content was all ready there.
Oh, and you will have to complete the story content to get to end game. the Main Storyline Quests (MSQ) actually provides a generous amount of experience so just playing the story should get you up to level without having to grind (save for an awkward lull at level 49, and 59). You could alternatively purchase a story line jump and a level jump to get straight to 60 for the new expansion. They are sold separately, but if you're new you have to buy both because if you buy the level jump only, you still have to do the MSQ. If you by an MSQ jump you can't do the first stormblood quests until you hit level 60. What I'm really enjoying is that there's so much call backs to past FF games. The 24 man raid in A Realm Reborn was the Crystal Tower, which is the final dungeon of FF3, it was filled with remixed tracks and fleshed out 3d models of the bosses and monsters from that 8-bit rpg.
In heavensward the main 8-man raid was themed around alexander.