I appreciate the honesty. I haven’t seen it nearly as much in the past few years but it used to be a common thing for posters to prattle on about how the entire reason they played was to overcome the challenge and that if you were doing it for loot, you shouldn’t be doing it (basically, holding themselves superior).
While the challenge is no doubt a big factor for many players, it seems unlikely that more than a handful play for that alone. Loot is a big motivator.
It’s the entire reason I took an interest in raiding initially back in vanilla… needed gear to pwn noobs in battlegrounds. The raids themselves were cool too but there was nothing high-minded about it.