Originally Posted by
Northern Goblin
The downtrend was because they released an absolutely awful expansion in Cataclysm, where most of the development time was spent on levelling content for people's alts (if they chose to play them)
LFD is a convenient scapegoat for coming out at the same time, you know what also came out at the same time as the subs declining? Transmogrification, yet no one seems to blame that for the game's decline.
Not relying on your server was a good thing, some servers were small to near dead, but people didn't want to leave their dwindling communities for a variety of reasons, but that should never be cause for locking them out of the game's content because they are unable to get groups.
Also WoW's social experience is a total myth, you only need to look at TBC classic's LFG channels to see how little social interaction there is in spamming "LF Tank/Healer MGT H" followed by a 15-20 minute dungeon run where the most anyone says is "hi" at the start and "thanks, cya" at the end.
The reason random heroic won't be in at the start of Wrath is to stop people badge farming and getting heroic epics without lockout restrictions (which random dungeon finder bypassed) and being overgeared day one. This social interaction argument is a successful coverup to avoiding the early unwanted implications of the heroic dungeon finder system. Watch it get added later, and it won't be because Blizzard suddenly stopped caring about "social interaction".