To be fair, I am in agreement with others that it has been strongly promoted p2w for this expansion. (Which is another good determent for a lot of people/players)
How so?
Legendaries.
I haven’t even looked into crafting one. I heard all the massive complaints. I heard after each patch they need to be upgraded… we didn’t have any of this in Legion. We had an over abundance of legendaries but we were not shelling out gold (wowtoken currency) for materials to craft them (final patch we could craft) or upgrade them with no visual reward expect more player power…
Note:
The only reason I feel Legion got away with the start of making legendaries not looking so legendary anymore… think of like Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest (literally changes you into a dragon form, along with a boss looking staff) or Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker etc. Is because we got an plethora of weapon skins for artifacts. So there was compensation and incentive.
Which promoting the player gap through player power was a bad mistake to begin with. When we see raiding has hit an all time low. I’m not sure how key participation has been doing… or just endgame participation in general. (I’ve never felt such a big gap)
I’ve been against these “borrowed power” systems in any type of form. (Which means legendaries for this current expansion.) For a while now. Azerite power held no visual reward either anyways
When there is no reward to carry on into the next expansion or other future expansions. I do not care to grind (participate as much) or spend the gold.
Now since I opt out of P2W formula… this makes it so there is a lot of the game I cannot participate in on a competitive level. (which is ultimately more difficult/challenge endgame) As the advantage to the people who are paying 2 win will be on the top of the charts. WoW has been heavily P2W this expansion and it could be just one of the many deterrents I mentioned earlier. (It did receive the pet name systemlands/borrowed power before it even launched.)