More Horizontal Progression please

[Fendred]

That's not why wow isn't doing so hot.

It's not doing so hot because its two phases are Facebook games(garrisons) or "raid or die", coupled with an obnoxious grind to unlock flying(which was the final straw for many.

After leveling a few times 1-cap to gets boring as balls. Even in Vanilla I had 1-60 down in 6 days /played so if you knew what you were doing it still didn't take long.

I'm referring to more long term problems over the course of its life than its current state of affairs. It turned into what you are describing after many years, and is connected to the second part of what I wrote where the pacing of the game eventually became incompatible with the bulk of its material. It created a situation for itself where the only part of the game worth approaching as an MMORPG was at level cap because that was the only place in the game with enough people to be MMO material. No one wanted to level because the pacing was poorly balanced by the Cataclysm rework. Yet they had to rework the pacing or it would have taken people too long to get to max level. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.