More games should use FFXIV’s cross hotbar system. It’s really, really good. I don’t see why this couldn’t work for WoW too.
Basically it’s hold L2 - you get 8 buttons. All of the dpad directions and the four shape buttons. Holding R2 gives you another 8. From there you can either hold R2+L2 for 8 more, cycle with R1 to another set of 16 or double tap either R2 or L2 for 8 each. More than enough for anything. People clear ultimate content (hardest stuff) all the time with controller and it’s just as normal as mouse and keyboard.
When I was playing WoW I had a 27 button gamepad, and a 16 button mouse, and I still ran out of keybinds. You don't need that many for PVE, but you need everything keybound if you want to compete at high levels in PVP.
Mostly the fact that the game design really doesn't mesh well with only having a few buttons. Between rotation, cool downs, 2-3 mobility buttons, etc I ended up using close to 20 different keybinds. There's a reason people make mice with entire numpads on the side.
And porting a 20 year old code base to another platform is a non trivial project.
i mean, ffxiv's cross hotbars also solves that though. uses the d pad and face buttons for binds, and the triggers as modifiers. 8 buttons by holding l2, 8 more by holding r2, and another 8 from holding both l2 and r2. so that's 24 easily accessible buttons without even setting up more crossbars to cycle through with a shoulder button (which would add an additional 16 for each one)
World of Warcraft without a chat box and keyboard would be pointless. Socializing is a huge part of the appeal for WoW. I suppose you could use voice chat, but it's just not the same as being able to type out conversations with multiple people at the same time and being able to converse with total strangers, without having to listen to some screeching kid hogging the voice comms.