Yes, Ion was the first dev to officially specify the three pillars. And he did this for the first time during the development cycle between BfA and SL.
When you have a game with as much diverse content as WoW, and with a playerbase as diverse as WoW, why would you even need to specify what the endgame pillars are and list only three, knowing full well that some players don’t do any of them?
The intent was to announce indirectly that open world content is no longer going to be considered a pillar by excluding it from the three pillars definition and excluding it from in the Great Vault.
For solo players, I wonder if asking for higher iLvl gear from world content is really what they should be asking for.
I think what they should really be requesting is more variety and progressively challenging world content as the expansion goes through the course of its life. Once that gets added to the game, the rewards should naturally follow suit to give solo players that sense of progression.
Simply doing a daily or world quest that’s static and doesn’t change in difficulty or mechanics or whatever can not and simply should not reward you with raid tier gear.
Ask for more world content first, then you can have gear progression.
That may be the case, which is why I said they should make what they want. If they actually got to have free reign they’d probably be able to both make what they’re passionate about and make the most $, as the product would likely be much more compelling.
They like the idea of having a powerful character. Not one they know how to play, not one they worked to develop. They want to log in on day 1 of a new patch and be BiS, or a few short quest chains away from being BiS.
Then they want to be able to afk in Goldshire and have all the people around them inspect them and praise them for how cool their gear is.
There was 1 patch in those expansions where the gear was good, and it was immediately crushed into the ground next patch. You did the world content in Legion/BFA for AP/Legendaries (Legion), not regular gear outside of 8.2.
World content in those expansions was propped up by systems, not gear.
That is exactly what people that advocate for solo content are asking for. They don’t say that, because it’s not a popular, or good opinion to voice, but it is what they want.
Super Mario Bros. was never changed. It had a diverse player base and was very popular. Remains the same game to this day. Go from 1-1, jump, stomp and burn your way to 8-4.
The problem is in the age of social media, some players that aren’t adaptable have started expected games to be dumbed down rather than for them to find a game better suited to their playstyle.
I know you think you’re being clever, but then stuff like this gets posted.
And you have to think “wait this content already exists in WoW.” And then you go and inspect the these people and see that they’ve done none of it.
And the conclusion I continue to draw after quite literally years of seeing the same conversations, is that the gear rewards aren’t good enough for the near negative amounts of effort required to complete this content.
So yes, I genuinely believe that these people will not be happy until they can get the best gear in the game by having to do nearly nothing.