I don't disagree with the above comments by Ebony.

That said, my opinion on the "evolution of mechanics" as EatCarbs put it, is that as gaming/geek culture have become A Thing(tm), more of the non-traditional gamer types flood into the target marketing demographics, necessitating mechanics that can be comprehended by the new majority. As such, you see a lot more "console port" type mechanics where things are greatly simplified and don't require any super-extra-complicated stuff like binding keys or making macros. Hell, just look at the Gnome Sequencer addon. Copy-pasta and instant 85% raid capability. If enough people use that and it mostly works, you have two things happen: A) the folks that normally either aren't coordinated enough to make it in raiding or have some injury/disability that would prevent it can now join the rest of the folks, and B) the folks that are able to raid find it much much less tedious to raid with GS. The devs see this and probably thing something like "Well, we have a TON of folks using GS macros -- maybe we can simplify things so they don't need that, and then we can make things more difficult because they don't have to worry about all these details like making sure buffs are up and the right resists are cycled and etc." So you get dumbed-down interfaces being favored by the majority of the people involved in the game (both players and devs). It makes sense, but it definitely makes the game(s) feel more like Candy Crush rather than an MMO.

Then again, maybe it's just me seeing a bunch of kids on my lawn...