I very much agree with your post and your bullet point list. When they transitioned to war mode in retail, I realized just how much of my gearing process was based around being able to protect my alts. Why get arena gear if you can just turn off war mode on your alt and avoid getting ganked? Then that line of reasoning snowballs and it’s like, why turn on war mode at all, why gear at all? Why play the game at all?
There are times where I’ll play and just try to ignore the fact I’m not being rewarded for doing arena in circumstances like that, but at a certain point I just check out and don’t check back in. So much motivation is derived from world PvP for me, and the game just isn’t the same without it.