Regardless of how much you want to say that those things are like something from WoW, then what you seem to be unable to understand is that SL was out a year prior to WoW, and as such, those things in WoW are a clone of AO. Enclosed fighting areas are not a unique thing to WoW either.. what you might refer to is EverQuest, which the original WoW is a very direct clone of.
People did used to have to do things you say, I couldn't equip ql300 scouts in all slots back when AI was the newest thing... I couldn't make ql 300 tier armor. But go ahead and forget what it was in your rant against what it was... yes, that's how it is NOW, because everyone skips directly to the uber twink items for endgame chars, so they can skip all the various things they would normally have to do to get some other items equipped. Including all the perks and research, you have access to so much twink potential at endgame that you can skip past much of anything. And I would like to disagree with time not being a factor back in the day... time was very, very much a factor.