My view is Blizzards approach has historically been people that can play 24/7 have a leash to people who can only play a handful of hours a week. There is a tether to not have this large gap based on play time.
Raid boss lockouts being the earliest.
Rested xp
Conquest caps.
Even artifact and Azerite power had severe exponential diminishing returns where a player not even trying to farm it was only 4-5 levels behind someone no lifing it.
Daily quests.
Valor caps (old valor)
So it’s really a matter of does Blizzard want to more promote and encourages long play times giving a larger power gap? Should they care?
Mythic+ kinda changes the game when it comes to how much gear progression you can get by playing a large number of hours, especially with valor.