Returning players have so much grind just to catch up.
By the time they reach rank 3/4 essences the prepatch will be out and none of it will even matter.
BFA is on life support, Take away the bad grinds that nobody wants to do and let us play the end of the expansion.
Maybe if you only play 5 minutes a day I suppose 
That might make getting stuff hard.
90% of the essence ranks are timegated, Some even take WEEKS to obtain the upgrades.
This late in the expansion it’s trivial and not even worth the time investment.
It’s the risk that comes with taking extended breaks. This is a MMO, not a single player, you cannot just pause it.
But it is all just pixels that will someday vanish. So why worry about it?
And? Its player power, those things take time to work towards.
We have, at least, 6 months until Shadowlands if not more… Why are you talking like the expansion will be out soon and there isn’t time to get all that? Yeah, getting some of the rank 3’s takes a bit of time dedication. They are direct forms of character power, they should take some investment to get. Rank 4’s are purely visual and meant to be a visual upgrade for the more dedicated players, a unique “skin” of sorts for abilities.
The grind is fine.
Should we send people full sets of heroic raid gear too, just to be on the safe side?
Oh no! You’ll have to play the game!
Maybe if blizz implement some type of currency that can buy a rank 3 essence that can be done in a day or 2… but they won’t do that
This is what happens when you have too many catch up mechanics. A little is nice to have but now time investment means nothing and demands are more .
If it takes them that long to get the essences then they didn’t need them to begin with 
Then why bother getting them at all if it’s just trivial?
I don’t know about baseline, but purchasing rank 3s would be nice. right now I’m working on rank 3 purification protocol, just grinding on some mechagon stuff. I’m also working on rank 3 vision of perfection, spamming workshop, worldvein resonance doing islands, and rank 3 lucid dreams doing nazjatar ally crap. none of this is 8.3 content so its been tough making myself do it.
It’s far to take 5 minutes a day however. Assault and Nazjatar takes me almost 2 hours and 30 minutes if not 3 hours. It’s really rediculous.
@Grindolain
This is what im talking about.
Currently the Woldvein takes 1 Week for R1, 1 Week for R2, then FOUR WEEKS for R3. And its not even current content.
VoP isnt too bad, got that done in a single day.
Naz’jatar one is… bad… 3 dailys every day for about 2 weeks (Once again, OLD CONTENT)
Then we still have to grind Visions for the cape (Perfectly fine, its current content), Raid, Do M+, World Quests for Rep, Dailys in Uldum/Vale for more rep.
Ontop of that PVP for conquest cap weekly, also have to get 1500 rating for PVP essence.
Its just too much to go back and do old content just so you can do current content.
Give us super powers like end of legion artifacts. All rank 4 essences and all top rank corruption effects blizzard!
Yeah sure doesn’t really effect me and essences are a huge part of dps.
At least 8 months now, probably more, Ion confirmed a 2020 release. I’m hoping Feb-March, maybe April is when the expansion itself releases. Prepatch in Jan-Feb.
Edit: Post below, I’m an idiot and misread it. Yes, late 2020, so probably 6-8 months.
Ion confirmed the expansion will be out by the end of 2020 in an interveiw with a german streamer
French* not German, had to be picky.
I believe he just said 2020 aswell.
Edit: He said late 2020, I misread some stuffs.
oh she was french? Cheers, i thought she was german XD
Why do you want them?
Those doing end game content got them months ago, those that don’t do end game content don’t need them.