I can’t tell you when I noticed it had become prevalent, but at some point around ~Legion, it seemed blizzard gave up on creating shoulder armor (at least for plate wearers), that didn’t clip through the weapons sheathed on your back. The great gods of design had decreed, yea, that shoulder armor must keep getting bigger, weapons be damned. There are significantly more pieces of shoulder equipment put into the game within the last 8 years that engulf the hilt of swords, the shaft of axes and hammers, than there are those that do not.
As a human, our own heritage armor shoulderplates clip through most every weapon you could desire to wield. I was really hoping it wouldn’t be the case and I was surely sad when I found it to be so. Now I come to find that most of the shoulderpieces from the next patch, just like the first of Dragonflight, will be more of the same.
It would be really great if I didn’t have to transmog into pieces from older than a decade ago so that my armor didn’t clip while standing idle. Please, Blizzard, I implore you do something on the matter. It is so disheartening when it clearly seemed to be something you guys used to put so much thought and effort into. I rarely remember this an issue in the past.