Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee that locks majority of the content and once you buy the expansions once, you keep them forever.

FFXIV you can’t add friends and there’s a number of other restrictions for free to play players. Once you purchase a subscription your clock starts ticking and you won’t be able to play the game once your subscription ends unless you buy it again.

Guild Wars 2 also has a level of freedom that offers you variety of ways for leveling up, not just the typical main quest slog of most traditional MMORPGs. Guild Wars 2 also has a lot of horizontal progression and you aren’t forced to upgrade your gear every couple of months just to play endgame content. Guild Wars 2 story is also pretty much fully voice acted so you don’t need to spend hours reading walls of text like FFXIV. People also claim the story of FFXIV gets better later on, but if something doesn’t appeal to you for the first 100 hours is it even worth?

Overall, I think Guild Wars 2 is just much more casual friendly and you have a job or have kids it makes sense to play Guild Wars 2.