Why Blizzard Succeded where others failed: A Response to Risen's Statmen

So Risen has decided to stop raiding because they feel that WOW has become far too casual, and they are infuriated with the injustice that 'casual' players can attain gear that's on par with the Tier 6 gear that they've worked hard to acquire by raiding BT\Hyjal.
My first reaction to reading their post was pure anger. I read it, re-read it & felt the moonkin fury welling in my gut. I've heard this argument before & not just with MMO's but in any sub-group that has new members join it's ranks.
During my years of martial arts practice students\black belts who had come up the ranks in the 70's, 80's & 90's & had to jump through hoops to prove their abilities would often complain about how the 7th & 8th Dan's that ran the US organization had become soft on the new students, how the standards had changed, how what passes as good technique today would've had the student grilled for sloppiness 'Back in the Day' .
I view this thought process at the most basic social level is is Elitism with an asterisk. The asterisk is the following: unless you were part of the group at this time, or at this place (alpha, beta, release etc.) you can never belong. You can surpass us, you can accomplish goals we never attained, but since you didn't belong 'Back in the Day', we'll never give you the same respect that
we'd give our peers. This is vastly different than elitism based on accomplishment. (I've got my tier gear, I've got my pvp gear.) With this form of elitism you can still earn respect amongst your peers.
But I digress, my main point of this post is that this Elitism, fails to recognize something important about WOW, because those who practice it forget something important. WOW succeeded because blizzard learned the lessons of the past. Those like Risen have forgotten them.
In the beginning there was Ultima Online, Followed By EverQuest, then Dark Age of Camelot. These games required players to invest huge amounts to time & created the image of the MMORPG Addict, because frankly you had to be either unemployed or extremely maladjusted to progress in the game. When I think of MMO's back then I think of people spending 12-14 hours a day to improve a tiny bit.
Then in 2004 City of Heroes came out which in my opinion was the first step towards casuality; which I define as being able to progress in an MMO and invest less than 3 hours a day. I use 3 hours a day as a standard because that's about how much tv a person watches here in the US per night on average. This was the first MMO I played & I could play it for 2 hours & then put the game down.
WOW came out later that year & it was designed from the begging to grab this casual market. If only 5% of the user base is going to see UBRS & the other 95% isn't, then your going to design for the 95% of the user base. What Blizzard did very well was motivate people to attempt to attain what the 5% of raiders attained. You may not attain Grand Marshal of the alliance but you could try. They also gave out talent points, which determined how you wanted to Play the game, but it was layed out quite clearly that if you were a druid, well your going to be resto, because the tier set only gave a bonus to your resto spells. And this wasn't only for druids, it was for every other class as well.
But what blizzard learned over time was that if you want to increase your user base, you need to not peg your users into one role, you need to allow your users the freedom, to play how they'd like to play & be able to see the end game content. The more players who can see then end game, the more subscriptions, which means more money, which means more content.