-Retail is not a monolith
-Timewalking is easy
-Chances are, you were with max-level players
-Quest at max to do 5 timewalking dungeons for a piece of raid gear
-Seen as a chore for many, rather than “Oh wow let’s look at everything and sniff the flowers and gaze at the ceiling” and all that sort of thing
-The dungeons are old content, folks have done these hundreds of times
It’s not what I want, but to answer your question, yes, this is exactly what retail wants.
In the case of TW, people are trying to run a dozen alts through the five dungeon TW quest, so they’re only concerned with completion as quickly as possible.
I wish they would extend follower dungeons to all the options.
I find timewalking to be the least enjoyable content in current wow. But it’s just a small piece of retail, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Some people may enjoy it.
I’ts not about how easy the content is… it’s about the state of the game is really sad. if this is what they want Retail to look like. a Souless game by almost “solo.” everything within 5min.
The leveling experience is shambles. The World feels empty and not alive. This is not really healthy at all.
This is what every wow player has wanted since at least wrath. For proof, look at the absolute tantrum the community threw back during original cataclysm, when heroic dungeons were even marginally difficult.
Or for something more recent, how the community inevitably ended up on mega servers in classic for the sake of convenience, and threw tantrums about servers being closed to try and prevent everyone piling onto one server for ease of grouping.
I feel like this is coming, or should at least. Just for leveling in general, or someone that wants to experience old content without waiting for a group. I still think group content should reward more, but would like to see them up rewards for completing follower dungeons.
I think the TW dungeon gameplay is terrible. Heroics are pretty much the same. I don’t know why it’s stayed this way for so long. It’s like people are trying to shoehorn Diablo gameplay into WoW, but the classes aren’t designed for that and the mobs have more HP.
I wish they revamp leveling entirely into a more streamlined experience. It’s fast now at the lower levels which is cool, but then it gets super slow at 70-80 for some reason. Then the scaling is all terrible.
I can’t even argue with this, because I was part of the audience that abandoned WoW mid cataclysm and didn’t return until legion was announced because I started to feel as I have grown into being able to articulate now: I don’t play WoW to be challenged, I put my time in tolerating WoW “being hard” and it’s not this pillar-of-my-recreation’s place to infer that I’m not good enough for it any more.
I queue in unkickable trios of friends (who I met in WOTLK when heroics fell over) to run timewalking at a reasonable pace, and otherwise stick to solo or duo delves or follower dungeons to level my 50ish alts, and no, I do not play this game to be challenged.
That said, that group pulling ahead of the OP’s tank is part of the problem with WoW. I sympathize. This is why I only queue in trios or not at all.