I agree with most of this but I’m going to add my thoughts on this last bit, I think a lot of WoW’s current playerbase, and this is the big problem with the mindset of the playerbase and the design structure of the game itself. A lot of players want to play but only on their terms and on their own time, which there’s nothing wrong with at all. Except they forget it’s an MMO so when things are already done for most of the playerbase and the feet draggers finally decide to work up the motivation to play, there’s nobody left and then proceed to complain incessantly.
WoW is a seasonal game, people need to play it like one. Or players need to demand Blizzard change the seasonal nature of it which would require a lot of work from the ground up. This is the pitfall with the game being only as big as the latest expansion/content patch. FFXIV on the other hand doesn’t suffer as bad from content droughts between expansions because the old stuff stays somewhat relevant. It isn’t like the ores and stuff become worthless the second the new expansion rolls over, or treasure maps, or primal crafting materials, etc. That’s when most people start doing those things so while there’s a decline in players objectively, you hardly see it to the degree you do in WoW.