WoW can do many things even with the limited tools there are.
For example, in Classic there is a quest in Feralas The Giant Guardian. The stone giant asks to esort the blind elf. So you take the bell and can pick whatever path, control the pacing, have as many or few breaks as you need, plan ahead the route and which enemies are easier to do. Yet later on we got a bunch of terrible escort quests that did not learn anything from it. Etc.
If you take a look at the Thrall panel you’ll notice that while the devs are passionate and do care, they care about their own preferred characters and narrative lines. After the panel my main thought was that the devs do not even consider the player experience as a factor in the story. Why should I even care about some vague prophesy from a book when it kill-steals the frag I wanted to get? Or maybe not a frag, but to convince Garrosh to pick another path and go on adventure together? Yet this did not even seemingly crossed the minds of the narrators, that the stories they do care about might not be the things that the players are interested in.
So, can the story as a concept be focused on the world, or smaller storyline, be a window for the player to explore the world, or have the player impacting the event? Sure.
With the current narrative team? I’m afraid we would need it to be replaced before there is a chance for good storylines.
gl hf