I think the WoW developers are becoming increasingly conservative in their MMO design philosophy. I sincerely think they regret some of the things they have added to WoW, but know they can't get rid of it now that the genie is out of the bottle.
Before it was clear that they saw no downside to implementing LFD, LFR, cross realm stuff etc, as they constantly promoted it and got fully behind that philosophy of gameplay design. These days they do acknowledge that there are both advantages and disadvantages to these systems, but they don't really debate the ins and outs of it much (at least publicly), except to say that a lot of players now rely on them and enjoy it.
As for GC, to me its clear he was a 'MMO novice' when he started and didn't appreciate the qualitative effects of online communities or close knit realms, and still finds it difficult to truly appreciate anything aesthetic as he seems a pretty hardcore numbers guy. I think its only recently that he has begun to really understand the differences between an MMO and an offline single player computer game. This criticism may or may not extend to the rest of the design team, but who really knows.