You can get ilvl equal to Normal Raid Gear, a step ahead of what you would have been able to earn in 9.0 / what was included on the PTR previously.
This is on top of the fact that the Cypher system will allow you to summon a robot buddy to help you out, zone-wide buffs, as well as the various Zereth Mortis enhancements.
Blizzard does not “hate casuals” - they are going the extra mile to pander to casual players in fact.
I’ll wait until the xpac drops to decide if it is trash or not. but thanks for posting the link.
I wouldn’t call this pandering myself. It’s a good change.
That is after you earn level 6 on your cypher equipment.
How long will that take?
It’s not like you’ll be earning it week one.
In fact by the time you’re able to earn full 252 out in world content, anything below like 260 will probably be looked down upon anyways.
No weapon upgrades for 252 which is fine
As long as heroic gear isn’t handed like candy all is well
As long as the unique effects don’t work in raid/M+/rated PvP, this is ok.
252 is not enough to do layer 16 in torghast thought they recommend 280+ if I remember
Item level have nothing to do with casual/hardcore. Raiding is casual gameplay in most cases. How do most people raid? They log in, bang their head into memorizing the really not that hard mechanics, and they log out and once they get their heroic set and weapon they disappear til next patch because there’s “nothing to do”. I’ve seen the most casual 2 hour a week grey parsers clear aotc, it is totally meaningless. Why do these people care what someone who log in every day and grind the other content get? When the HARDCORE ELITE FEW list their raid to fill a few spots, is it helpful to them that people signing up have a 246 weapon instead of a 252 weapon? It is a pointless complaint to say they are being pandered to. No one is being pandered to, ilvl is a terrible end game to begin with and causes every problem that could possibly be caused.
That ilvl only holds if you have no upgrades to the Box of Many Things, as we have already seen with the ilvl recommendations in 9.1.
I think the open world progression system is kind of neat and look forward to leveling up with it.
prob not so much for leveling it up on alts I would want to play, but I’ll just do what I’ve done all of shadowlands with them and ignore them.
they recommend higher than it needs to be. 252 was recommended for this tier and you certainly did not need 252 gear to do layer 12.
That aside, I think normal raiding gear ilvl is reasonable for world content.
I mean, ok? Still isn’t alternative paths of progression and the only people who made the argument it was “lazy casuals who just want free loot” were the raiders/m+ crowd who are still being catered too.
It’s not really a compromise, it’s more reflective of the developers mentality than anything. “Just give them some open world loot to shut them up”.
You mean a robot buddy to get in your way. Stand on your loot mob, and agro that thing over there? 
this is pretty much exactly how it’s going to play out 
Some people are just never happy.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/911061686386044980/943977601171619850/22150947.jpg
3700 cyphers to unlock level 6 252 item level gear
Casuals will still farm months for normal quality gear
While the rest of the players get their normal/heroic gear within a month or two
This is acceptable, grind for months to get your gear, or play end game like the rest of us
That’s what a lot of people want. This is giving it to them. Seems like they got what they wanted.
I’m happy as a clam.
I hope it takes a little while to get to that ilvl. One big issue with Korthia is how it completely trucked the value of things like LFR very early, making it a meaningless game mode for anyone hoping to get anything from it if they did any decent bit of Korthia.
I want a progression journey in my casual play. I don’t want my content to be catch up stuff for raiders and M+ junkies.
Hmm, yes. 2 of the 3 end game pillars are being catered to. I wonder why that is?
Well for me personally the loot was just a secondary to the major issue, which is again alternate paths to progression. The game needs an endgame that isn’t E-Sports.