Linear, linear, linear

[Shurrikhan]

Actually, try going back and reading old WoW dev interviews. Players preferring only the most optimal path through a dungeon is exactly why they stopped creating the Sunken Temples, Maraudons and Blackrock Depths.

They stopped creating multi-path dungeons? Is that why 75% of dungeons even in this latest expansion are... multi-path dungeons?

(Heck, in that second part of Cutter's Cry, groups used to kill one pack and move on...now we don't even bother doing that and just run straight to the portals to the next rooms.)

Probably because they removed all experience gains from killing dungeon mobs, further skewing reward per minute away from side-paths, since those mobs aren't required to reach the next boss (the only things that give exp in dungeons now)?

Simply put, it's likely impossible to find something "suitably" rewarding that the playerbase in general will spend that extra time. It's not SE's fault. At all.

And our proof of this is... rewards that were painfully lackluster in their own time, do not scale (unlike tomes or experience), and are gated by mobs with uniquely zero reward directly or indirectly?