Yes, you are ranting and trying to attribute everything WoW did in the past as a contributing factor to its success, when that doesn't have to be the case. WoW is majorly successful because it unlocked the MMO genre for the casual crowd, compared to the older ones like EQ. Riding off the WC3 is also a huge factor. It continues to make the game more casual and catchup mechanics more accessible, but it obviously made people who are "too casual for EQ but too HC for current WoW" uncomfortable.
Back on the topic, it's also ok to go on a charge-base system in place of a timer for alternative solutions, but it will be equally, if not more, toxic.
-You can do this in terms of deaths, X deaths and you fail the timer. This turns the game into a complete crawl and the more careful crowd will definitely be clashing with the ones that want to go faster. Regardless of a timer existing, some people don't want to spend 3 hours in a dungeon just because they can
-You can do this in terms of charges: you get 1 BL, 5 3-minute CDs, etc, per run, so sure, you can drag it on, but you can't get additional big CDs so you can CD through every single trivial pack (which would also imply you have no place of being there). The issue will still remain.
This is different for raiding, because raiding has a capped difficulty, and the fact that encounters completely reset when you wipe. You can't just pull a boss, spawn 20 mobs, kill 5, and only need to deal with 15 the next time you pull. So using raiding as an analogy for failed key upgrade, is not good.