WotLK introduced the dungeon finder, easier game play and flying mounts at large; Cataclysm the LFR. All stuff many hard core players are making responsible for the decline in difficulty/long time engagement in the game.
When Cataclysm started, Blizzard try to stear around and made the dungeons harder compared to WotLK; people disliked it, so they changed it later.
I know many of the competitive pve guilds on my original server shut down during Cata, and I heard the same thing from people I knew who were on other servers. The only server I was on that retained a decent pve scene was Proudmoore-US, and they exist as a social scene with a large LGBTO contingent.
But the other thing that was happening to all these people was adulthood. The people who don’t want hardcore play aren’t being lazy or entitled, they’re adults who just don’t have the many hours it takes to be competitive. They don’t complain, they just leave.
Blizzard put in an easy mode to keep from losing time-limited players, not because of entitlement. I’m not sure “entitlement” is a concept that makes sense anyway in a game that has to make money. Adults have money, but not time.
So this makes hardcore players something of a minority in their own game. I don’t know what the answer to this is, but Blizzard is always going to follow the money.
Meanwhile competent casuals subscribe long enough to consume a new expansion, then they go do something else. It’s possible the current business model is not sustainable. The hardcore players do put time and money into the game, but they can’t be most of the potential adult players. People consumed the new Classic quickly not because it’s “easy” but because all these old players have already mastered it.