Been thinking recently about exactly what has changed in WoW from the time it was released until now. Basically my conclusion is that the developers wanted to make a great RPG game at launch, with things like balance and quality of life slightly less prioritized in order to achieve a great and immersive RPG experience.
Slowly but surely, as time has gone on and as new developers have replaced the old, I think the general idea and direction of what WoW is has simply changed. The new philosophy seems to be one more of 'constant fun', extreme quality of life, fast paced action and 'twitch gameplay'.
I'll list a few examples to explain what I mean concisely.
No flying debate: I think the RPG elements are quite obvious on this one, more time spent in the world with more people in the world. That's it, period. The other side is "why would I want to spend MORE time in the world, it's a waste of time! I just want to get to the action so I can have fun (raiding/PvP).
Class balance / homogenization: From a RPG perspective classes don't have to be balanced at all. Stone, paper, scissors. This adds greatly to players really feeling like their class, and a unique experience comparatively to other classes. From a more action game, quick pace oriented approach this doesn't make sense though. Why force people to wait for a specific class to do some group activity? Give everyone nearly every ability so whatever group formation forms, all abilities and buffs in game will be present. The downside? Imagine the extreme example of this: every class exactly the same with just different spell names and animations (basically masks). Not so exiting.
LFG/LFR: RPG's, the MMO variants at least, since conception were always very heavily focused on communication. It's not easy getting anywhere in the real world if you decide to never talk and only do things you can do on your own, so why would it be in a game that's basically emulating real life but in an alternative setting? Putting the effort in to looking for a group and being a good group member was much more rewarding than going solo. From the newer design ideology though, this is the opposite of the truth. People enjoy playing solo -> nearly everything should be soloable. If a group is required, why force people to look for each other? Just do it automatically so people can log in, have some action, and log out.
Flavor: When the game launched there were tons of things (spells, items, gear etc) that didn't really serve a purpose other than making the world feel real and deep. If you don't value RPG elements though, these are basically 100% useless, so why even have them in the game?
I could go on and on but this post is already much longer than I intended. I don't mean to ruffle any feathers, but I think this is quite interesting and often try to understand what Blizzard's design intentions are, and how extremely deviated it seems to be from when the game launched. I think it probably is time for a lot of people to realize maybe WoW isn't the game for them any more, but easier said than done after you've invested countless hours of countless years into the game.