Yeah I alluded to this earlier, which is why despite contending the “playing against AI in wow is harder than against players” (which I disagree with) I think the entire of the pve situation (which includes ai, scripts and environmental factors) can be just as challenging as pvp because ai does not perform their rotation suboptimally, nor do they err, delay, get out of position or several other errors players may make. On it’s own this isn’t bad, but when you throw in scripted hazards and affixes from the environment alongside punishing numbers (ie if you don’t kick this you die) it’s a very different story.
PvP is certainly harder if we assume every human being plays 100% optimally 100% of the time, but if that were true, certain matchups would never end because they’d stalemate. We know this to be false, because games end in such matchup situations, which means that “misplays” happen frequently which reduces the burden load on the opposing player (in that their optimal play is rewarded with a win, or they can now get away with suboptimal play themselves and not lose).
With high end M+ for example, this isn’t the case, as suboptimal play isn’t matched by your opponent as it were, so if you make a mistake, it is usually punished with failure. So it becomes very much a game of “how well can you deal with the script? And if we add x variation with weekly affix?” and whilst in theory a human could learn every script and perform them every week perfectly, can we say that groups are regularly composed of players whom can all maintain that standard? i don’t think we can. If it were true, everyone would be able to time 15s atm after an evening of reading wowhead guides or whatever.
It’s like reading about driving a car, and driving a car. Technically speaking (assuming everyone else obeys the rules of the road) a driving experience will follow a script if you follow a set route. Despite this reading about taking that journey does not equip you to make that journey if you have never done it before.
Now throw in variations (affixes) such as roadworks every third junction, police cars requiring you to pull over every minute and being faced with bicycle processions every motorway, it’s the same story. reading about dealing with and dealing with it in the moment are quite different because we, as humans, can err.