I’m not entirely unsympathetic to your point. But …
I came here from primarily the sandbox side of MMOs where there wasn’t even a concept of grouping or instances, so dungeons and raids were an alien concept to me. And since i started a little after Vanilla, I found myself basically in a solo open world for the first year or two of play. I even vaguely remember encountering my first green portal and wondered what a “raid group” was (it’s astonishing, but despite years of playing various MMOs, I genuinely didn’t know what the term meant at the time)
Even then I never intended for WoW to be my main game. Alas, the industry sort of imploded and the alternatives dwindled. So I found myself in a position where I enjoy WoW’s solo content and it continues to be more fun for me than the alternatives (including Skyrim) I’ve tried, but WoW’s group content has just never grown on me.
So now we’re in an awkward place where I feel rooted here and I want to give feedback on how to improve the experience, but at the same time it’s very hard to avoid stepping on the toes of people who came here looking for a very different experience. But my idea of an MMO has always been from the sandbox side: one of many different playstyles coexisting, not a single path.
Some of this is on me to reset my expectations and accept limitations (overall, the game is in the best place its ever been for me so any quibbles are just quibbles). And I can understand the desire of devs to encourage people to try things outside their comfort zone, even though my own comfort zone is now pretty well-defined and inflexible. Although I have no desire to irritate you with complaints, in the end, if we’re going to get a better game for everyone, I do have to give feedback on what itches. And sometimes that itching includes the placement of group content gates.
Ideally I’d like us all to be able to say what itches and try to find win-win solutions, but its hard on a forum with so many voices with different opinions, intensities of drama and levels of sincerity. It’s easy to fall in a rut of getting defensive and suspicious (goodness knows I’m not immune).
Anyway, I just wanted to say that although I may quip, I’m not oblivious to how complex and frustrating this can all get when we try to simultaneously hold to condradictory visions of the game and I really do want the best for everyone.