Final Fantasy XIV has been experiencing constant growth since Shadowbringers came out in 2019, and in the last few months has absolutely exploded and obliterated WoW's numbers even before the harassment allegations came to light, and yet XIV's instance system is thoroughly built around an LFR-esque system called Duty Finder.
The original version of XIV wasn't like this at all, and that version was a massive flop, but then it was rebooted into its current incarnation by Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, who has extensive experience playing MMOs for decades from Ultima Online to EverQuest to old-school WoW (I would recommend watching Noclip's documentary on XIV [1] [2] [3] for more on Yoshi-P's background and the decision to completely reboot the game). It's precisely because of his experience with the warts and frustration of old-school MMOs that XIV is so streamlined and committed to not wasting the player's time, and XIV is massively, head-over-heals successful for it.
It turns out people really, really don't like forced socialization, and when an MMO comes along that does away with it, people flock to it in droves. The facts don't bear out your allegation that forced socialization is "the real reason most people stick around": XIV's runaway head-over-heels success is due to the fact that it so thoroughly eschews forced socialization that it's often described as a single-player JRPG punctuated by multi-player instances and a completely optional set of social side content.
The original version of XIV wasn't like this at all, and that version was a massive flop, but then it was rebooted into its current incarnation by Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, who has extensive experience playing MMOs for decades from Ultima Online to EverQuest to old-school WoW (I would recommend watching Noclip's documentary on XIV [1] [2] [3] for more on Yoshi-P's background and the decision to completely reboot the game). It's precisely because of his experience with the warts and frustration of old-school MMOs that XIV is so streamlined and committed to not wasting the player's time, and XIV is massively, head-over-heals successful for it.
It turns out people really, really don't like forced socialization, and when an MMO comes along that does away with it, people flock to it in droves. The facts don't bear out your allegation that forced socialization is "the real reason most people stick around": XIV's runaway head-over-heels success is due to the fact that it so thoroughly eschews forced socialization that it's often described as a single-player JRPG punctuated by multi-player instances and a completely optional set of social side content.
[1] part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0yQKI7Yw4
[2] part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoOI5R-6u8k
[3] part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONT6fxiu9cw