the mmo genre players have shifted quite a bit and i think most mmo's haven't properly shifted with it.

this shift is what players on this forum calles second life (aka the second life reference)

tl:dr players play for more social aspect and while they can include reason like battle content/pvp they mainly play to be with friends which would be like housing, glamours and silly fun non combative side content, and content that is based on the players and not combat is more flexible and can give much more then some fights with a few rewards that is done once gotten.

people play less for battle content now then they use to before this is not to say battle content isnt a big reason to play a game but look at the biggest discussion point of this whole thread (besides ai) thats lack of content and the way old mmo's kept old and new content alive was making it long and tedious you had to do the old content which was a long grind then get to the new content which was a long grind and it was popular for the time, but this isn't what players like anymore what they like is the shiny new content and the rewards and to skedaddle on out, heck when we look at player numbers most people dont even touch side content and only play the base expansion and leave. this is a big reason we considers players and playerbase different cause the playerbase is the normal amount of stays more permenantly vs those who only play temporarily.

while there still are plenty of players who would like a long grind for a reward the shift has changed against that, as you can even see it in debates of adding something to a the cash shop vs in game cause players dont all even want to do content for certain rewards.

a lot of the truly popular games you see are games that are heavily modded and players basically entertain themselves no matter how much content they are given.