There is no core audience. The entire WoW audience is vast, diverse and comes for different reasons.
So the right build for retail is an offering of a multitude of core gameplay features which mutually share a core gameplay reward structure.
This means in practice that:
- Dungeons
- Raids
- Battlegrounds
- World Quests
- Mission Tables
- Pet Battles
- Scenarios
- Arena
Should offer gear, gold and rep.
With each core gameplay feature offering additional feature-specific rewards like cosmetics, mounts, gear, etc.
This design is fool-proof for maintaining a diverse playerbase that comes to the game for its sandboxed nature. A do whatever floats your boat approach. If you just want to arena all expansion you can. If you just want to world quest all expansion you can. Etc, etc.
No more forcing people into a feature they dislike. No more telling players they have degenerate playstyles. No more big brother developer input.
Build it and they’ll come. Mudwhimp and you lose.