Psychologically speaking, it’s not actually a carrot, it’s more of a stick.
Y’see, for a majority of the players that are focused on Raiding, there’s an underlining mindset that the primary goal to raiding is to get gear and become more powerful. And anyone that’s fully invested in that process is willing to “weather the storm” in order to become that much more powerful.
You can see it in a lot of the commentary that these folks proffer themselves:
- “You have to be willing to work for it!”
- “It requires actual skill and effort, if you’re not applying yourself, you’re lazy!”
- So on and so forth…
Altogether, it’s adds up to being more of a punishment-based system than an actual reward system for the majority of the playerbase. And if you want to get past that punishment system?
Then you have to be willing to put in excessive amounts of time or pointedly build a dedicated group of people to play with, likely using and excising anyone that doesn’t fit.
Thus, as such, I don’t feel the system is intended to be rewarding in any way for anyone playing at a “casual” level, and is instead intended to be more “punishment” until people can push through to the actual “reward” phase.