FFXI's endgame, for me, was the twice weekly dynamis followed by sitting in Sky/DA HNM camping for 3 hours at a time (if you knew the last time killed...) which could mean during normal playing time or it could mean in the middle of my work day which means I'm S.O.L. for even trying to see the mob I want to kill for a week due to the rotation of the spawn cycle.
Wow's endgame is almost all in instances (think dynamis) in that you have your own copy of the area for you and your group. Timers are from one day (heroic instances) to a week (Karazhan-10 man and upwards).
Normal level 70 instances can be done with pick up groups (random people you don't know) and can be done anywhere from 45 minutes to a few hours once a full party is complete.
Getting to top level is much easier in Wow. You don't need to stand in the same camp for hours upon hours one night in order to pick up a level. You can explore an entire zone and do so solo. Quests have rewards for gear as well as experience and money. You can easily make it to top level without ever having to deal with buying items at the auction house or requiring specific hard to get gear. Quest rewards (in Outland at least, 60+) are VERY useful.
All the gear in Warcraft is bind on pickup or bind on equip meaning once you either pick it up or wear it you can't trade it (think "ex")
Yes, if you want to see "end-game" of WoW you will need to join a guild. End-game wow is basicaly 10 or 25 man raids, and world bosses (aka Behemoth, Serket and so forth) type mobs. Please note... A LOT of guild don't bother with world boss's!! They are also the only ones that can be contested by more than one group.
A really really BIG thing from FFXI to WoW, is that when you are doing end-game, you are actualy DOING something. You aren't waiting for a spawn timer, and when that timer is up, you aren't only having to pay attention for 3-5 min's every 30 (aka King Behe timer...)
The good thing about WoW, is there are soooo many guilds out there for really casual, to semi-casual, to semi-hard core, to hard core. If you want to see these things 1-2 days a week or 5 days a week... you can basicaly find a group of people like minded to go with.
While End-Game things in WoW can take a large chunk of time to do, you DON'T have to do it in one sitting!! Kinda like Sky boss's, if you have all the pop item's, you can say... one day go pop Genbu and... another one (omg I forget their names!!) day 2 go pop the other 2, day 3 go pop Kirin. WoW End-game is on set reset timer's, mostly of 7 days, but there is 1 end game instance on a 3 day timer.
Most WoW guilds will have set times their raid times are. Anywhere from afternoon, to early evening to late night. The thing is there normaly ARE in 4 hour blocks. But.. for those 4 hours you ARE doing something, are killing more than 1 boss (unless it's a learning run on something the guild hasn't killed before) and you are getting a chance at more out of it.
While WoW End-game requires you to spend $$, it's not in the same scale and such as FFXI does. WoW you need food that gives you + bonus's (like FFXI), and potions for healing, mana, and to give +bonus's. It does NOT require you to kill a boss, pray for a drop, and THEN spend millions of gil to be able to USE that drop (cursed items).
As for the blogger being a casual raider. He pretty much technicaly IS in WoW terms. Casual is considered 2 days a week, semi-hard corse, 3-5 and hard hard core is 7 days a week raiding. As for the blogger... he just took on alot of responabilty to try and make the guild work. It isn't something expected or even thought of from most guilds to ask someone to do. He wanted to see the guild progess, which sometimes some people will have to step up to. A good thing is... there are MANY casual raid guilds, who DO progress really really well. So you don't have to play 7 days a week 6+ hours a day to progress!!
On another note to the OP though, if you are only lvl 22 now, and want to play casualy, there WILL be another WoW expansion sometime on the Horizon. If you aren't going to level fast, and want to join the experience of leveling, I would actualy suggest to not worry about end-game at all for the moment! If you play a few hours a night/week then, you might be better of learning the game, worrying about how to min/max your class, and gathering $$ for the upcomming expansion. In that time, if you can find a casual guild for Kara and Gruul's and ZA and want the experience go for it!! The end game will be changeing in the next year though. There were many many places before this current expansion that.. well people were always at (5 man dungon's, 20 man raids and 40 man raids) that almost noone ever goes to and will never get to see if they didn't before the expansion. Just something to note =)
In my opinion both games have a similar problem. People suck. Both games seem to draw the same amount of stupid drama about so-and-do took my drop, left guild/linkshell and so on. Finding a group of like minded people that play at a similar time frame as you is more difficult than most of the bosses and obstacles in the game.
The game is faster paced than FFXI and the PvP is fairly well balanced. Gear actually matters but skill is a very big factor.
I gave up FFXI to play Wow and will not be going back. I think FFXI was a great game, I just find that I like Warcraft more.