The story telling systems in wow are old and after 20 years of development, no longer up to bar with commonly accepted industry standards.
More so, player base is ageing and will grow more engaged in single player play vs group play. Facebook’s knows that the older you grow the less likely you will be to you invite-a-friend-to-a-system. You are less likely to engage with new people in general as you age. Seems to be a baseline human behaviour, not system driven.
This justifies investing more in single-player-first and social-aspects-second strategy.
What is single player missing?
Methods of engaging with story.
Talking with NPCs, dialogue options, dynamic face animations, cinematic camera movement, stock character AI voices, stock character movement
Methods of engaging with environment.
Environmental puzzle areas, doors, ladders, barrels, ropes, ragdoll animations, environmental movement, breakable doodads,
Additional camera control to player.
Provide the following options: Over Shoulder Option, Running Camera, World Camera, Flying Camera, Party Camera, Raid Camera.
Problem: “Engine is old - is a bad argument.”
How is this argument still alive? Are you operating a monolith? Is this a legacy code problem or legacy thinking problem? Microservices? Modular systems? Strangler Fig Pattern? Release an updated version of the engine with new expansions. Build cross version compatibility with legacy engine for player character data, UI and settings. Many systems allow for this why does wow not have this? Is the team mostly artists and business people so nobody knows how to actually operate the pyramid anymore - just paint on it?