Replying to one of your other comments but doing it here so you read it.

"Also, as an MMO, I started playing in 05 expecting the story of WoW to advance and zones to change, because I entered the game actively wanting a dynamic world. I like seeing the unfolding saga of Hogger, Vanessa, the Red Ridge bridge as much as the fate of Illidan and his demonic legion. Static lore is stagnant lore."

IMO, there doesn't seem to be a good way to tell a story in a MMO.

If the players can change the world, other players may never get to experience the world before and during the change. You could create an event that counters your actions (Redridge bridge is rebuilt by players then destroyed by Deathwing) but that to me makes my actions feel even more meaningless than if I merely collected some nuts and bolts from nearby gnolls.

You could phase it but then you have the issues with resource nodes, being out of phase with friends and guildies, splitting the player base (making the world seem emptier), and setting up an attunement like process with questing. If phasing is temporary, you run into the issue of actions not being meaningful. If phasing is locational, it breaks immersion by having arbitrary boundaries where reality changes depending which side you're on.

Static lore is stagnant? In a way, yes, but Cata still lets me revisit dungeons to kill bosses over and over. Players still respawn in BGs. Ore just pops up out of the ground. NPCs never tell me they don't want to buy anymore useless grays. What makes quests so special?

That's the way of living breathing worlds - you miss things. Do I deeply regret not being there for the 11 hour way against the Silithid? Yeah, but it happened and was great. Things that happen without you make the game more real, not less. Quests that happen in the distant past, like leading up to discovering Edwin Van Cleef, were not great to do on a Kingslayer, but learning of Vanessa on one is great - it's an advancing story.

I know single player games tell the same story each time you play it, and that's what sets MMOs apart- they tell a living world, instead of a story. I want to get a story from single player games, and a planet that turns and changes and goes on, with or without me. Yes, you can still go to Molten Core and kill Ragnaros, but the players don't care anymore, they won't respect you like they would if you had done it in 04 - they know the story has advanced, why can't the game itself acknowledge that?