You’re not forced. Plenty of people are playing the game casually and it’s fine. One of my biggest memories of the original vanilla WoW, was when TBC was going to come out soon, and I was talking to a Warrior friend of mine that had played all of vanilla.
I inspected him, and virtually all of his gear was green. I said “Why did you never gear up?” He said “Oh I dunno, I just had fun running dungeons and a lot of the time I’d let people have gear. I just play for fun.”
Never forgot that, because I was so young and sweaty, and half the time I was raging about everything. Now I play more like him. Just content to enjoy the game. I dont race anymore, because I’ll never be the fastest or the most geared. Just play with where you’re at and enjoy it.