Of course, and it’s important to keep in mind how much the context changes. Not just in gaming context, but keep in mind:
MMORPGs are hardly a new genre. Their players nowadays are a different generation of humans than when the genre was young.
Social context changed entirely between the start of the genre and today.
In a similar vein, digital socialisation is entirely normal now. We no longer need a very fancy minigame (EverQuest) attached to your online chat room just to socialise.
Through WoW and then again with the Wii gaming exploded as a hobby, even before mobile games created a somewhat separate but huge extra market. The modern target audience is on a wholly different scale. Just look at the peak subscription counts for EQ1 or DAoC.
It’d in fact be quite noteworthy if default features didn’t change substantially and continuously.