What this doesn’t account for is those who either:
Couldn’t start the first week
Or
Level slowly due to time constraints.
I couldn’t start launch day and took 10 days or so to get to 60 and geared for Heroic dungeons even. Couldn’t even do LFR the first reset due to not getting the ilevel. I have very little chance getting into an M0 group even, all because I’m a couple weeks behind. What happens now is I let my sub lapse until the next patches catch-up system starts, and hope I can time things better. That’s money Daddy Blizz doesn’t get. Too many more like me and your precious raids are going to start being impacted. Wildstar proved that in today’s market a “raid or die” elitist centric MMO can’t survive. I’m going to try out FFXIV and ESO. Maybe those companies actually want my money. 
M+ didn’t open until the 3rd week. Those guys were already accounted for.
Then don’t expect others to wait for you or now want to group with you.
They’ve “been there, done that”.
Seeing how there’s plenty of people bringing up alts, this is false.
There’s already a metric ton of catch-up. You’ll be getting a full armor set of 190s next week (184 this week minus shoulders).
What more do you want ? Weapons/Rings/Neck too ? There’s honor gear for that that also upgrades again next week.
As far as m+ goes, I can’t provide that much input, since the other 5 members of my guild are actually active this expansion, but we have managed to clear a +7 this week and barely failed a +8, with ilvls ranging from 185-195. We dedicate two hours per week to run 4 m+ dungeons. I’m the exception at ilvl 199 because I also pug Nathria each week since it opened. I haven’t had any issues joining pugs casually, when I have time, and clearing normal. Heroic is a bit more of a challenge but I’m making progress there. Actually, I’ve had success pugging all of my AotCs since WoD and haven’t found Shadowlands to be any harder or easier for a casual pug raider. When I first started Nathria, I had no issues getting into groups at 180 ilvl for normal the week it opened. One of my guildies was able to get into normal Nathria pugs (8/10) this week and was ilvl 188 at the time.
If you’re already trying (and seems like not able to get into groups) to pug m+, pugging raiding isn’t that much of a step up for getting some cool gear. Just keep an eye in the group finder for groups that are willing to taken on players that haven’t cleared the raid yet, I still see plenty of those in the group finder every time I’m looking for groups.
I do think improvements could be made to the covenant gear system, it seems by the time you get to the next campaign level, the gear you get and the ilvl you can upgrade to is not helpful, even if you’re really unlucky like me (14 boss kills between H and normal this week and not a single piece of loot). I’m only just now unlocking the m0 ilvl for the covenant gear.
Or my favorite, I could farm an arcanite reaper mat, create it myself, and then use or sell it. One of the best weapons in the game you could actually /gasp, craft!!! No hamster wheel, no people telling you you are not good enough to get that item, an actual cool reward that does require work but not in the shoehorned hallmonitor progress that we now have.
Here is the fundamental difference. Hardcore players wants to rush through leveling content and then sit through 20 different difficulties of the exact same content. They want to pull out their spreadsheets and say level 15 difficulty should always be exactly 2% more or whatever more difficult than level 14. They want to have this gap between them and everyone else.
Personally I think that’s asinine. I think it should take 6 months JUST to hit max level in an expansion. This should be most of the actual game.If hardcore players want to live in the game and rush to max level in 2 months, fine, but they don’t then get years of endgame content catered only to them. If they want to rush, they should run out of content until the rest of us catch up. This would give Blizzard 6 months to create actual new content instead of the patchwork we get while they are trying to keep up with the tryhards.
I want Blizzard to spend time on more content, I don’t them wasting time on 75 difficulties. It creates boring content and makes the power gap between players way too big.
I mean to me this is obvious.
I mostly agree with your OP except for this. If you want the best gear, you should have to do the most difficult content, period. That’s been a staple of most RPGs for a long time now. People shouldn’t be able to run endless amounts of easy content and eventually get the best rewards.
Now should there be a solo path to get high level rewards? That could be something interesting to explore. But it should be just as difficult as mythic raid and high level rated content rewards to obtain.
Personally I think they need to promote more group content over solo, but that’s just my own unpopular opinion. Challenging difficult content with a large group of friends/guildies is what keeps this game fun for me, but I also realize that I don’t speak for everyone.
You got it, why in the world would anyone want to play like that? I’d rather select players I play with and make sure they arn’t trying a 10 key without ever seeing the dungeon in the first place, and even then there’s a risk with pugs.
You can raid Castle Nathria in 184 dungeon gear.
They added a tier of difficulty in Mythic that did not exist back then.
Furthermore, sure. You could raid MC with tier .5 blues. That was the progression step. It was the ONLY one.
You could not, however, walk into AQ or Naxx wearing tier .5.
That’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about skipping difficulty tiers, which you have never been able to do.
I also play ffxiv alternating with WoW (off of it currently until their next xpac most likely) and again, if you want the best gear, you’re going to have to find and dedicate time to do the dungeons and raids repeatedly to get the gear. In fact, I find it harder to progress in the content patches there because if I take a break, the catch-up mechanic is mind numbingly boring and long. I think my current status there is stuck on the 5.1 dungeon because I don’t meet the ilvl requirements to proceed with it and the story quest, and it’s a decent grind of repeated dungeon running to get the gear to run it (at least it was when I logged in at 5.1). For the savage raids, it takes even more repetitive raid running to get geared up for them. They do have an alternative valor points style gearing path, but it takes way longer than actually doing the content and is even more repetitive.
However, the story is much better than WoW imo, really enjoyed playing through.
I mean there’s some parts I agree with here and some parts I disagree. MC is not the hardest content in the game though I get your point (end game raid that’s available). By comparison, it would be on par with what Nathria is for Shadowlands.
With that said, farming/grinding whats’ required for Arcanite Reaper is a severe grind. I think the people who are arguing agianst this point is referring to the notion that there are alternative paths to get gear that would boost you to mythic worthy ilvl which would be way easier than making Arcanite Reaper. Also Arc Reaper was at one point straight up bis worthy that hardcore raiders were the ones who had Arcanite Reaper as opposed to other demographic of players. I understand you’re arguing the different context than others are saying here which is “more meaningful ways to get loot” but really the same demographic of players were raiding and getting Arcanite Reaper loot. As a casual player, you could try to stockpile for Arc Reaper gear but you weren’t getting them fast enough and by the time you got Arc Reaper as a casual player (if let’s say you played 1-3 hours a day), you’d still get the weapon right about the time nobody needs Arcanite Reaper. Though I do agree it would be cool to have other alternative methods to get bis-worthy gear. Professions feel so lame right now. I still think Vanilla/TBC professions is way more in depth and satisfying and higher quality than what professions is right now. Professions right now straight up feel like a shell of what professions used to be.
If fancy restaurants required millions of subscribers to stay open, you can bet your bottom dollar they’d have chicken nuggets on the menu.
Raiderio was created because gear was so easy to get, ilvl was no longer an indication of skill, the lvl of content completed or game knowledge…
You are being romantic vanilla if you think MC was hard. We are not comparing the level of difficulty. We are comparing the ilvl discrepancy between players in dungeon blues and players in BWL gear.
Unfortunately professions fall under the umbrella of “forced content” that some complain about. We could have cool profs, but then players would complain about gold sinks, blizzard trying to sell tokens for profs and being “forced” to grind bad content to be competitive.
I’ve read more of this thread than I care to admit, and the bottom line is this - Blizzard understands that they need to cater to casual players. The 1% of players doing Mythic Denathrius and M15+ aren’t going to pay the bills. You can sit up here all you want with your elitist nonsense about how the best players deserve the best stuff, but in the end that’s a damn good recipe for failure from a business standpoint.
Like Torghast, everything will be brought in line. You just gotta be patient. If you’re unhappy with the way things are currently the best thing you can do is unsub. Blizzard doesn’t give a rat’s patooty about your forum post, but they do care about subs. Come back if/when things change for the better. 
That’s doubtful. What level keys are you trying to pug?
Some are difficult. I won’t lie. But +2’s are very doable in heroic dungeon and m0 gear.
Wah. Run more keys then.
Majority of groups don’t care about io score.
Nope.
hit me up when I’m online sometime next reset, and ill tank a world tour for you, lol I’m always bored anyway chasing after my last 2 pieces.
#Grumblez11316
Yeah I see your point of view about forced content. But like one of the reasons I came to WoW over other MMORPG like Lineage 2 at the time I started playing was a very well fleshed out professions. I obviously didn’t like grinding really rare mats liek Black Lotus and stuff but at least the professions helped with the immersion too and it affected your gameplay somewhat based on choices you made.
Now I believe they can still make professions better without it being forced content. Don’t put BiS to be gated solely behind professions. Don’t make getting gear via professions super easy the way it is now (seriously crafting leggos is so easy right now). That other person’s argument about Arcanite Reaper I may have some disagreements with but professions being fleshed out and giving players an option of being able to obtain something so powerful by doing professions alone I thought was cool. I heavily enjoyed exploring through a profession to get mounts/pets/etc as well. I enjoy LW/skinning (my prof) for how lucrative it is but I’m debating on switching to engineering to see if it’s as fun as it is in Classic.
Think vanilla wow but far better getting loot.
Vanilla looking at 3 to 8 months on average of every week raid to get your gear this a drop in the bucket. How long has the expansion been out and I am sure some ppl have or is close to having all their gear. Ppl still play vanilla till this day.
Vanilla’s grind was a lot longer in bigger zones.
Play an alt? Well that’s a 2-4 month investment for top players. For casuals that’s a 5-6 month investment.
Now WoW retail literally races you to the top where they expansions are essentially endgame expansions.
I understand where you’re coming from OP.
I’m a returning and casual player, I have real life work, family responsibilities and other hobbies I enjoy. I’ve come to realize early on M+ is out of reach for a while, it’s a bummer at times as I want to be part of the action also. So, I’ve decided to do other things in game that I enjoy and not sweat it that I’m not doing M+ at this moment, one day I can. I’m choosing to do other things, like unlocking Allied Races which I’m currently working on both Horde and Alliance (missed last two xpacs) while still working on my main and leveling alts in SL. It is what it is for us casuals. Take it with a grain of salt and enjoy the content that’s open to you at this time.
As you can see op stated loot is problem. It’s not on all accounts classic was success. Loot did not rain from the sky.
In my opinion ppl complain over anything and everything nothing will make them stop.
I wish the game was more flexible too. Honestly, I think Blizzard is trying to do less development for more sub time. This expac, in my opinion, is the worst one of all time. Time gating everything is a clear indicator of how little they have done, and reducing loot to gate player power, is just sad.
Hopefully enough of us cancel our subs to force changes from blizzard and the worst game director wow has ever seen.