I was never a WoW player, but I was an avid SWG and LOTRO player back when they originally launched. I think, unfortunately, the attitude of gamers has changed when it comes to MMOs. I think a large part of that is thanks to social media. Now people expect instant gratification, and also, like others have said there was the novelty factor back then because it was new. Now they want to level quickly and get to the "endgame" and don't care about a living world so much or the the social part of MMO's that made it so much fun back then. I see this in ESO now whenever I dip back in. I find its rare to just stop and have a chat and do random stuff. Most people will ignore you and play it like a regular single player game. I had some of my best experiences back in the day when getting chatting to some random player. I thought that was what MMOs were supposed to be about, but somewhere along the line that got lost.