It’s part of a larger problem. WoW is over-rewarding when it comes to trivial content. I’m in the group that says “LFR players don’t need Mythic gear” – it’s not because I want show off my e-peen, I simply don’t think you can justify gigantic bonuses for some rewards. On principle, I don’t believe the best gear in the game should be obtainable if you never participate in the toughest content.
There’s a lot of social interactions that come from gear inflation and over-rewarding “bad players.” (I say bad, but I’ll justify it here.)
Where was the last time Item Level meant anything? We see it in the game all over the place, but rarely do we feel Gear = Skill. So, instead of GearScore and Item Levels, players moved to your IO score and AOTC as a metric.
It’s safe to say we see Premade GRoups using insane IO scores for rather easy keystones (1000 IO for a +6 – It’s dumb). You can run your own keys, sure, but not everyone chooses to do that. And when people decide to run their own keys, they want a successful run to push their key higher. Hence, they use other metrics.
Where gear comes in – over-rewarding content means “bad players” will have higher item levels. Setting a minimum item level hurts players trying to gear up and such; systems like WF/TF inflate the average item level for everyone. Newer players won’t be able to get into groups as well, they can’t get into Normal mode raids because the minimum item level is too high, or the simple fact that a 375 player is outmatched by a bad 390 player.
At that point, over-rewarding gear can only be combated by get insanely lucky, or going through the same rewards progress as everyone else (time-gated) – and the item levels will continue to rise. So, gearing up through this timed-gated content doesn’t really help. Replacing a 400 piece with a 405 piece, when you’re at 380 item level…simply put… sucks. This is because the emphasis on the game is endgame content, instead of the journey. So, if you can’t get into endgame content, you really have nothing to do in WoW.
In short – it’s about reining in the extreme swings. Reducing the power of players, and reducing the number of “good rewards” from trivial content. You don’t retain players by making it harder to join content. Reducing gear overall, Titanforging included, makes the game more accessible to more players.