Idk if you are trying to be sarcastic or are genuinely frustrated because of personal experience but I think most people understand what you described quite clearly and aren’t faulting the players who didn’t invite them but rather the system itself which is incredibly flawed.
The problem will always exist so long as the game’s progression path remains in its current state. The way things are right now you can easily get to the veteran progression cap just by doing delves for a week or two and the LFR. Another week or two of Normal raiding plus a mix of crafting/catalyst/Great Vault and you’re easily at the champion progression cap. From then on you’re left with two options: (1) just quit or go do the same with alts until you get bored; or (2) struggle through the nightmare that is pugging M+ and Heroic raiding for as long as you can stomach it.
That is the only PvE endgame that WoW offers and it’s supposed to keep you engaged for several months at a time but the atmosphere is so toxic and the struggle with the LFG tool so draining that anyone in their right mind will burn out very quickly quit out of sheer frustration. The early progression system is in a great place but the endgame is a debacle and frankly I don’t know how they can fix it because the content is simply too difficult to allow random queueing yet the alternative is clearly untenable.
So the end result of all this is that the vast majority of players end up having a terrible time playing the game past the 1 month mark of a new season and it’s been like this for far too long. But they have to figure something out because those subscriptions are going to take a nosedive again if they can’t keep people playing and the trading post isn’t going to be enough.
Well I have been called an optimist and I do tend to credit people with basic reasoning skills but you might have a point, lol. Still though, regardless of whether people realize it or not the current endgame system is a massive bottleneck and the solution can’t be for everyone to just play a tank or a healer in order to get quick invites. Something has to be done to accommodate the majority of players who are DPS.
And I am NOT trying LOL… I run delves for upgrades and on my alts run Heroics and LFR for my guild. I have ZERO intention of ever running TWW mythics during TWW. I will do them next expac the same way I did with DF. My end game is seeing the story and enjoying the Lore. I don’t give a RIP about the “hardcore endgame content”, and it is fine by me.
There is no way you can know how good a player is, unless you invite said to your group and play.
A score says absolutely nothing about the skill of someone, just like a degree in rocket science does not automatically mean that this person is Einstein 2.0.
A good human does not rate other humans based on numbers, but on experience.
The part of your own definition you linked that you don’t understand is “general access.”
Not letting you into 1 key does not prevent you from getting in on a different key. No player has the power to stop you from joining any key other than their own. That is not preventing general access.
In the example given, the player being rejected is only losing out on accessing the group. They do not lose out on access to the content.
Imagine if they were accepted to the group, but the key holder had to afk for an hour. Is that still gatekeeping?
Would a player leaving a key mid-run also be gatekeeping, since they player - who left - has “limited access” for the remainder of the group to successfully complete the dungeon?
If they were accepted to the group, but were unable to perform at the level required to clear the dungeon (either because lack of skill, gear, or both), would that be said player limiting access to the other 4?