Daily Maw - Not needed at all, unless you are M15+ pusher to get those sockets. Torghast upgrades are not mandatory either and you will get them just by doing weekly.
Anima - Not needed at all. Your sanctum has nothing to do with story progression.
Loremaster - all zone quests - not needed either.
In BFA, however, you HAD to grind out ALL the reps. You had to farm Azerite non stop. You had to do all zones story lines.
The only thing you ACTUALLY need to do is weekly 30m renown campaign and MAAAYBE weekly torghast. But even that, you can easily stay with 190 Legend as upping it does not increase its power, but stats alone. If you don’t have gold, not a problem at all.
Ah and please, stop announcing your departures. This ain’t a bus station.
Edit: Since this kinda blew up and some things are taken out of context, here is the clarification
Yes, weekly 1,000 anima for your renown. Can be done in a few hours
Torghast - What do you expect? The entire xpac is around it.
Reputations/All zone quests - You will not need it for flying. There is no pathfinding in Shadowlands. This was announced long ago.
Daily Maw - Getting “Revered” for all Torghast takes a week of daily Maw. If you don’t want it, then don’t do it. Doubt it makes that big of a difference. And if you want 2% stat boost w/ 3 sockets.
Renown - Yes, it does give 2% stamina. But if you think that 6% HP buff will make you ungodly strong, you are mistaking.
Xpac just started. A lot of people treat first 6 weeks as if it’s been out for 2 years. More stuff will come, just like with every other expansion. But before you complain of lack of stuff to do, get all those things done. Then complain.
I have literally never seen anyone call SL grindy. Plenty of rightful complaints about the timegating, but I’ve never seen anyone use the word “grind” as a complaint so far.
Of course things will be time gated. Xpac just launched. It would be dull it release everything on Week 1. Blizzard is a business. They need to retain their playerbase and encourage them to login daily.
If all 40 renowns were released on Day1 -Everyone would have been 40.
If Twisted Corridors and All wings max L8 came out on Day 1 - It would have been cleared by 2nd week in and out.
I am farming Anima towards a transmogset right now. 25,000. I get 1,000+ a day. Weekly 1,000 anima is nothing. But yes, I forgot about this one, as it really is easy.
10-15 WQ’s. Each WQ takes 5-10 minutes. So that’s (at max) 150 minutes - 2.5 hours of gameplay. Per week. That’s avg of 21 minutes a day.
Time gated what? Renown? All it does is unlock ur soulbind tree and such. It balances player power for people who can play a ton vs those of us who only play moderately. It’s trivially easy each week to stay up to date.
I couldn’t give a flying F about the story.
There is literal nothing to “Grind”. I have not done any world content outside of the weekly world boss for weeks now. I leave the city and sanctum only to fly to M+ dungeons. and most of the time i just let my team summon me.
I literal log in, and discover that i have little else to do other queue up for professional progression content. such as Keys, Raid, or PVP.
I don’t need any excuses. It is part of the progression. Just like another comment stated, it allows casual players to stay on par (somewhat) with players who have more time to invest into the game.
There will always be a progression system in place that is timegated. Remember old days before Mythic there were heroics. Daily lockouts. You only had 1 chance a day to get something. Today, you can farm Mythics as much as your heart desires.
Takes 2 minutes to fly from 1 zone to another. I don’t understand how people complain about 2 minutes run time to a WQ or a dungeon.