Thanks for your post and the link to that video.post
I don't want to call you cynical or even jaded, because I don't think that's accurate based on your opinions on this alone and I don't want to generalize like that. Though I do think that the opinion itself is coming from a more jaded perspective than my own, which of course is totally fine. I'm moreso just trying to illustrate my more "optimistic" point of view coming from someone who always approached the game from the shoe-less gnome angle, and never even really cared about the opinions of other players (I did wear shoes, but not because someone told me to, but because I wanted to wear shoes and to have stats. I was teased by friends who did raid in 7th grade (lol) because I played the game more like Zelda or Oblivion, but I didn't really care because I found value in exploring the game my way.
I suppose I've never been "hit" by the more tryhard players because I've almost never interacted with them. Now, this isn't saying that they don't exist or that the game doesn't cater to them (they cater to everyone nowadays but tryhards will prefer to hang out with tryhards), it's just that I haven't encountered them.
Since I can mostly just speak for WoW, I'm not really sure I agree with the notion that it was ever not "better shoes = better player" aside from like the first year. Romanticizing a bygone time is fine, but I don't think it's correct to say that the game suddenly stopped caring about people playing to explore and interact with others. It evolved with it for better or worse, and invited other playstyles. My guild master on the fresh classic realms is going to play a retribution paladin while raiding because he thinks it's cool, and people who obsess over being optimal get the boot. "Casuals" who learn the game together with each other still exist.
Anecdotal but; I'm part of a Facebook group specifically made for Solo players (I don't consider myself a solo player compared to many of them, some refuse to group with anyone they don't know) but it's a group of over 80,000 players playing the game their own "suboptimal" way, and still find meaning in the game. Everyone doesn't infact go to wowhead to look at datamining, and everyone doesn't infact choose the best talents because it's easier to follow a guide. Some people want to play a fire shaman, or a warrior who dual-wields onehanders, or a marksman pet which uses a pet. It's probably objectively worse, but the game lets you do it, and not every raid environment would punish you for it (This wasn't the case a few years ago, but fluff/lifestyle talents like that have come back since the new Dragonflight talent trees).
I think a lot of the feeling of disillusionment many veterans have (and the players I kind of meant in my initial post) is self-inflicted to some degree, because their expertise grows too, and their insight on intricacies and what "being good" constitutes also deepens. Coupled with that and maybe that they've been burned by the elitist players, they might think that "this is the only way the game is able to be approached now, then it isn't for me anymore" which I don't really agree with.
I know you both talked about the developer side of things too, and how certain means of interaction have been "ironed away", but I initially just meant player-to-player-to-world interactions, so I didn't factor that in at all. And you're probably right about most of those things.
Maybe all these people clamoring for horizontal progression are right after all. I had never given it much thought before ?
Sorry for the long post. My main point was just that there are still people who value the "old/bad" way of playing MMOs, even in WoW.