it could be worse. could be like the start of Legion. you had to choose which weapon got the upgrade stuff which made it 99% of the time the wrong choice to choose anything other than the main weapon. an offspec weapon getting the upgrades literally took away potential power from the main weapon.
at least offspecs in shadowlands have some value higher than a fresh character. 
to date, i think WoD was the most alt friendly because all you really needed to do was level them, get catchup gear and your good to go.
in shadowlands you need gear. the right covenant, renown, conduits, soul ash. soul shards. around 20 usd in wow tokens. 40 hours of gameplay, and depending on your chosen content focus, RNG for your RNG to get stuff from the vault. the right shards of domination. the RIGHT domination gear and min of 2 others. OR you need to have have a score for your mythic+ to get accepted to a group or be a tank/ heals.
if you are just starting in pvp, you are about a month or so behind on gearing. to even come close to catching up you need to be caught up to renown 59 and have about 40 hours of pvp grinding or 20 hours of slamming your under geared head into a wall in rated pvp grinding out losses. or if you are lucky get carried through enough wins to have half as much rated gear because you missed the vault so many times already.
WoDs main failing aside from trying to delete flying was giving too much instanced convenience. people did not need to leave garrisons. they didnt need gathering professions. the nature of the mission table made the game almost Alt Required to min max gains.
a game is a game. people are people. and people can and will min max anything and everything to game the system. be that a video game or I R L. but people also tend to be lazy and will follow the path of least resistance so if it takes more effort people will shift gears to a product that will let them do just that.
FF14 gives players a massive path of least resistance as all the “classes” are accessible to a single character.
how could wow shadowlands have been more alt friendly and spec friendly? have all 4 covenants automatically receive credit for the anima for game play reasons.
once conduits are unlocked for one class, they are automatically unlocked for all alts of the same class.
sell a full set of conduit unlocks from an exalted rep vendor. have it BoA so players can send it to alts and they can unlock ALL the base conduits.
at min, double the amount of charges that conduit energy have. base it off renown 40.
better if you can buy more charges for 100 anima each.
Best if you remove it altogether
Raise time walking rewards to be equal to heroic gear.
raise Time walking Vendor items to be 3ilvl lower than Mythic 0 ilvl
(i know, people have a lot of time walking badges saved up but from a normal starting point, the primary way of getting the currency is from doing the dungeons. why are the rewards WORSE than what is obtained from the dungeon? Its on par with the Vault giving lower base ilvl items than the content needed to obtain them. like killing 9 mythic raid bosses so you can get normal/ heroic gear from the vault. the reward system is backwards on those vendors.)
Lego items are over priced and the root cause is the barrier to entry for making them. needing to make them multiple times to unlock the next rank never should have happened. it made it so alt crafters have a massive list of chores they have to do before they can be made at a relevant ilvl
more bag slots… all the legos and gear and anima items and research items and necessary items is very unfriendly to general game play. it forces an interruption to playing the game. it turns it into bag space simulator, which breaks immersion. the more often a player has o go back and forth the less likely they are to want to come back. the further behind they become as a result, the less motivation to even bother.