World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

[Avidria]

The irony in OP’s post is that WoW is actually dying because it doesn’t cater enough to its casual players. Harder normal raids, too many grindy systems every new patch, not alt friendly… the list goes on.

Yeah wow was built and thrived on its casual player base. It has never for one second been anything resembling a hardcore game. I do think it has more midcore content than ff, at least when I still played it in anything close to a serious way anyway. The endless m+ grinding for RNG gear stats and the changes that had basically no good rewards from casual (non rated) PvP were a big part of what made me lose interest in playing the game seriously (this was back before shadow lands mind... haven't played that at all). The godawful story, bizarre anti-flight crusade and a slew of other little changes all piled up to put the nail in the coffin for me.