PLAYBOY: So the experiment didn’t work?

[Craig] FERGUSON: No, the experiment always works. There’s no such thing as an experiment that doesn’t work. There are only results, but results may vary. Here’s what I learned:

a way to quickly evaluate any proposed new form of government or legal system: ask the proposer how arrest is distinguished from kidnapping, and search and seizure from trespassing and theft -- if they can't give a good answer, the proposal is based on ignorance and you need not waste any more of your time on it

Nick Szabo

I use a powered shaver rather than a blade.

Sorry, but I disagree. Personally, I rather dislike going through arbitrary pointless motions. The "magic" is already gone, and mindlessly trying to go through the same motions to bring it back is futile. We are better off without it.

Well, one short answer is "not much anymore, which is why I hadn't played in a long time before coming back recently".

Another short answer is "I often say that WoW is a glorified IRC server; I mostly sign on to socialize with guild mates".

There's a longer answer, though, and it's this:

1. Hunter is one class. I play others. Actually, I've always primarily played tanks, and tank classes have never been anywhere near so monotonous to play.

2. Even in 2006-2008 (the period of the Burning Crusade expansion, when the "only hit Steady Shot" approach worked), to say that hitting that one button repeatedly is the only thing you needed to do to win was a bit of a simplification. True, your rotation was as simple as can be; but there are other aspects of correct play, both in-the-moment (DPS cooldown timing; mana management; positioning and other things to do with fight mechanics; pet control) and during-downtime (gearing; pet optimization; writing appropriate macros). I can honestly say that playing a hunter in raids at this time was genuinely and unreservedly fun (in addition to the aforementioned other aspects of play, this was partly because being the best at DPS was very satisfying and rewarding).

3. The game content itself (story, characters, fight mechanics, etc.) is interesting (though this is less true recently, imo).

So, while I understand and acknowledge your reasons for not playing (and indeed they were my own reasons as well for a long time), I disagree with taking my aforementioned hunter experience as a strong example of WoW being boring.

Here's an example from World of Warcraft:

In group content in WoW (i.e. teaming up with other players to kill big monsters — the high-end, maximally challenging game content), one of the key roles is the damage-dealer, or "DPS" (damage per second). One of the DPS classes is the hunter, a ranged attacker. The hunter's job is to deal as much damage to the enemies as fast as possible.

Like all DPS classes, hunters have a wide variety of damage-dealing abilities, with names like Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, etc. Traditionally, damage-dealing classes use their abilities in complex, shifting sequences, called a "rotation", to maximize DPS. (The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this discussion.)

At one point, I was playing a hunter in high-end raid encounters, and consistently performing very well (doing significantly more damage than anyone else). I would often group with other hunters, who were not performing nearly as well. I often had conversations that went like this:

Other hunter: Hey, how are you doing that much damage?
Me: Oh, I just use Steady Shot over and over. Nothing else.
OH: Haha (they think I am joking)
Me: No, seriously. Look at the damage meters. Steady Shot over and over, never use any other ability. That's how you maximize DPS.
OH: That's dumb / that makes no sense / some other similar reply

<next raid, same person>

OH: I still am not doing very much damage...
Me: looking at damage meter You're using Serpent Sting / Arcane Shot / thing that is not Steady Shot. Why? Just use Steady Shot. Literally never hit any other button. I promise you that is how I'm doing it, look at the meters if you don't believe me.
OH: But Serpent Sting does damage over time!
Me: ... it's less damage than just using Steady Shot and nothing else. I can show you the math that proves this, or you can just look at the fact that you are doing the thing you said and doing much less damage than me.
OH: Well, you can do it that way, but this rotation works for me.
Me: gives up

In short, I met many people whom I simply could not convince that the way to maximize performance was to just hit one single button over and over. They insisted on complicating things, gaining no performance benefit and incurring a significant performance penalty. Note that none of these people ever said anything like the following:

"Yes, I realize that hitting Steady Shot repeatedly would maximize performance; however, I find that boring, and so I prefer to hit various buttons, because I find that more entertaining, and I willingly incur the performance hit involved."

These were people who were denied spots in raids (and rightly so!), i.e. denied access to game content, on the basis of their poor performance. They had a clear incentive to improve, yet did not.

"Always attacking orcs first" is not the sort of thing I am talking about; I am referring to the sort of thing that has no real roleplaying significance.

I've had many just such experiences in various sorts of gaming (World of Warcraft, D&D), attempting to teach less-experienced players how to play effectively. (I can elaborate if anyone wants.) I can attest that there's definitely a common attitude of "well, at most this is doing no good, and it's how I like to play".

In fact, one particular aspect of this is that people seem to place value on personalization — doing things their way. The problem is, if there exists some optimally-effective way of doing things, then most deviations are likely to make performance worse (quite often because, as the OP says, the modified/added action consumes resources or otherwise has an opportunity cost).