This is such an odd line of argument. They continue to put a lot of resources into classic. Clearly it's paying off for them and there is a large enough demographic that it's financially sensible to do so. They don't run a charity.

There's a decent video of someone playing WoW Classic for the first time - https://youtu.be/NjQgoaagS-E

And it basically came down to "classic WoW was simpler and for new players provided something that modern WoW doesn't/can't really - especially the spontaneous community.

WoW started out as an MMORP, but it's really a massively single player game until you're top level anymore.

The demand for classic wow got much, much stronger after cataclysm, because then you couldn't even "pretend" anymore.