We even had developer created content pre-CU and pre-NGE .........all those NPC's that had the little quests or missions..heck..I didn't get my Meson Telescope from a Vendor, I did a random mission.
We just needed more stuff to do for the days when PvP was too /facepalm or you'd gotten tired of grinding out another 3 profession mastery's.
RoTW was a good start (even though it was post Patch 14.1)....and you could see from the success of its' sales that the player base was Content Starved.