Yeah, that’s the approach of Danuser afaia.
I think the role of the content designer should be to provide compelling hooks for player storytelling. And by compelling, I mean both interesting and well-executed. Players should be drawn in by the quest and incentivized to undertake it, but the quest itself should be mere manipulation to get players interacting. It might be through cooperation, competition, or some kind of symbiotic relationship where both sides benefit in different ways.
More at https://ilkohall.blogspot.com/2021/02/shadowlands-empty-manipulations-with-no.html with a few extra links (including ex blog of the ex Everquest dev)
Wrath is the expansion that was still “in spirit” close to the previous WoW experience, but already placed some seeds that would develop into big problems later on.
Now, there is a whole different discussion about why that it, a few thoughts I had I gathered for another discussion, but maybe others can add something.
tl;dr: supposedly a big portion of the dev team was fired after the accets from TBC were finished, and the new direction started going forward alongside WotLK, but came full swing after.
gl hf