WoW has always been more accessible than other MMOs anyway. Even when it was 'hard' to level, it was easy for an MMO. Always has been pretty solo friendly, which I think is great.
Yep. Some people talk about this weird revisionist history version of WoW where it was a hardcore player's paradise, and then one day Blizzard decided to screw "the hardcore" by making the game as casual as possible. Which is ridiculous since it was their goal from day one to make an MMO that anyone could get into and have fun.
Really, all Blizzard did was make WoW less of time-sink. I can't speak to the difficulty of raid bosses today since I haven't been a hardcore raider since Vanilla. But I do get the impression that Blizzard is a lot quicker at nerfing bosses that are destroying guilds.
WoW certainly had more hardcore elements way back when, but the game was never specifically for the hardcore, it was meant to be for everyone; Blizzard have just gotten way better at zeroing in on that audience. And you can't blame them, WoW ruled he fucking world for a time and will go down in going history as one of he most influential games in the history of the medium. Not bad for a game that was originally built by a team of 35 people who had never made an MMO before.