I spent some formative years helping people run MUDs and applying my pattern matching brain to the problem of how to make a multiplayer game succeed.

I played WoW precisely because they dodged the first bullet, which is inflationary or deflationary economies caused by each content creator trying to leave their mark by making better gear for their quests than are already available. The whole thing with used equipment only being for to be scrapped guaranteed that low level characters weren’t all carrying the third best helmet in the game.

But they still had the same problem with expansions - the need to change things in order to declare, “I made that”. They wouldn’t have needed classic if they followed your conclusions.

However, without those changes would they have stayed on everyone’s radar as long? Hard to say. Balancing in LoL and friends seems somewhat easier because the mechanics change less frequently. So maybe they would have been fine or maybe they’d be on WoW 2.0 now.