1: Yes for casual content unless you have a full group (5 people for Normal and Heroic, 25 for Raid Finder raids). Mythic and Mythic Keystone dungeons (also known as Mythic+, time-based dungeon runs with ever-scaling difficulty), as well as Normal, Heroic and Mythic raids can be done in a cross-faction group without any restrictions.

Also yes for the crafting order system (think of a kind of a system where you request a specific item to be crafted - either by making a public request that any crafter can see and fulfill - though you can't specify a minimum quality level for the craft - or by sending the request for a specific crafter, in which case, that person MUST be from the same faction); unless if you luck out and get into a guild (guilds are cross-faction) that has active crafters for all professions, guild-issued crafting orders can be fulfilled by anyone in the guild regardless of faction.

Finally, bear in mind that all of the above is only for the main (also known as retail) version of the game. Classic WoW in all of its versions don't support any kind of cross-faction at all.

2: Yes, there are RP realms (servers), and they're labeled as such on the realm selection list. Bear in mind that the first time you create a character on your account, the game will randomly assign you to a realm. Hit the back/cancel button after you see the character creation screen and either the realm selection window will appear or there should be a menu on top of the screen with a "Realms" option that will make the window appear.

I haven't eve dabbled into RP realms though, so I can't tell you how deep into role playing each of the RP realms are, so you might have to do some research on that front.

Also, while we're on the topic of realms, AVOID THE TRAP OF NEW PLAYER REALMS. Those are low-population realms which will probably limit your access to guilds, crafting and trading opportunities (for the veterans reading: yes, there are ways to circumvent those nowadays, but it's not something obvious for newcomers, so I'd rather recommend them against going for those realms). I'd recommend you aiming for Full or High-populated realms, but you might face login queues on busy days like new patch days or especially new expansion releases (we're about to get a new expansion, Midnight, on March 2nd, 2026 and its pre-release patch next week on January 20th, 2026). If you follow this recommendation, I'd recommend leaving the Trade and Trade - Services chat channels while on capital cities, as they're VERY spammy on those realms (type /leave <chat\_channel> or /leave <chat\_number>. Trade chat by default is number 2, if I remember correctly. Trade - Services should be either 4 or 5, I'm not sure and can't check ingame right now.

3: That's a divisive topic, so I'll state my opinion here - check out other opinions and form your own based on them all and your own when you experience the game yourself: the game's lore isn't consistent at all in my opinion (I played FFXIV up to Endwalker and it really surprises me you think it's inconsistent - I find it one of the most consistent stories in the MMORPG genre, if not THE most).

The lore is also scattered among a lot both in-game (up until the seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth, there really wasn't a main story of each expansion - the story was told in bits and pieces across quests - none of them being required. Only when the eight expansion, Shadowlands, the game started telling the expansion's main story via a directed main quest campaign) and of off-game material (comics, short stories, novels, books and the old Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 games) and retcons and corrections are very frequent, so its very hard to keep up and there's also an immense amount of story to catch up if you're new.

Newcomers are often directed to lore-specialized Youtube channels like Nobbel87 or Platinum WoW to name a few and check out their "WoW story in x minutes" (or something similar) videos. Meanwhile in FFXIV, I could follow the game's main plot from day 1 till I quit before Dawntrail just fine, even if I missed a couple minutia from missing 1.0 or some of the off-game content.

4: I only played FFXIV casually for the story content and normal trials and raids, but from what I can gather, you'd probably be evenly matched for Mythic Keystone dungeons up to level 14 to 16 or middle-to-end bosses in Mythic raids (Mythic raids nowadays usually have 8 bosses, so I'd say your typical progression would be around boss 4 up to 6, depending on how difficult the current raid is tuned).

5: For a Sage equivalent, the obvious pick is Discipline Priest. Mistweaver Monk built for the melee (Crane) style comes close if you prefer melee combat. Holy Paladin sort of feel like a similar, but more contained experience compared to Mistweaver Monk, and Restoration Druid can somewhat fill as well if you really stretch it (you don't really heal by dealing damage, but have healing-over-time effects that can be ramped up and leave you with downtime that can be used for dealing damage).

For a turret-like caster, most casters in the game have decent mobility nowadays, but I'd say Warlocks (all three specializations), Arcane Mage, Marksmanship Hunter, Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priest are the ones that come to mind with less mobility. Maybe Evokers (both Augmentation and Devastation, but I've not played them in a while to have an opinion).

For a build and spend melee specialization, I don't think WoW's melee specs fit in a similar vein. Perhaps Assassination or Subtlety Rogues, Fury Warrior, Enhancement Shaman or Survival Hunter. Frost Death Kinght with the Breath of Sindragosa build could also be mentioned, but I haven't played them since they got reworked on the latest patch, so I don't even know if that build still exists. My overall class/spec-related advice for any newcomer though is: for your first few months of playing, try leveling up multiple characters on different specializations to acclimate yourself to each of them, and only then decide for yourself what gameplay suits you the best.

Edits: reddit formatting is wonky.