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

[DPZ2]

And WoW Vanilla was never a real story game.

Anyone who thinks D&D is not a story game is greatly mistaken. Every campaign is a different story. There were a number of stories in WoW, each told separately, each brought into the greater fold of an overarching storyline. Even in Vanilla WoW.

True, you could ignore the books, at least through Wrath of the Lich King.

But the books were not necessary to understand what is going on in the game. This problem has the current WoW.

If by "current WoW" you mean anything that followed Cataclysm, I'd tend to agree. But one must not pretend that books being the meat of every storyline is something that only recently cropped up. It's been a continuing problem for the last 10 years. Or have you conveniently forgotten every expansion after Mists of Panderia?