The design principles behind Shadowlands have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that WoW devs were willing to continually kill WoW (in terms of both number of players and design quality) over the past 7 years to make a game that raiders would praise.
Virtually all of the bad design decisions made throughout the past 7 years can be explained through the lens of pleasing raiders, or creating systems complimentary to raids to keep raiders subscribed and doing content outside of raids.
Mythic+ end-of-dungeon rewards had to be nerfed starting in 9.0 so that raiders don’t feel forced to run keys repeatedly for the “free” loot. This undid most of the development progress in creating 5-man content as an alternative endgame progression path, something many players had wanted for years.
PvP gear had to be nerfed starting in 9.1 so that raiders don’t feel forced to do rated PvP for the “free” weapon. This undid most of the development progress in bringing back PvP vendors as a legitimate gearing method.
World content and soloable content gear rewards had to be nerfed starting in 9.0 so that raiders would not feel that the “free” rewards were too close in power to raiding rewards. This undid most of the development progress in providing power-related content for the average or casual player.
Despite the progression systems we had in the past that targeted all players, the special progression system of 9.1 (Domination Shards) was created specifically as a raiding reward, and allows raiders to enjoy up to 5 passive bonuses in all content, as well as one overpowered set bonus in select content. The complete exclusion of non-raiders was intentional, and proves that no sacrifice was too great to keep the raiding minority subscribed.
Torghast in particular was anticipated to be a major expansion feature for the entire max-level playerbase, but provides no gear progression, and is instead tuned to the power levels of mythic raiders, who can exploit the full bonuses of their gear and earn the supplemental power upgrades that interest them.
Legion was the only recent expansion where the everyday players were allowed to shine in their chosen content, and we saw almost universal praise of that expansion, except for the constant whining of the raiders who could not bear to see World Quest Andy or Andrea get their BiS legendary from an emissary cache.
WoW developers need to learn that the sound of millions of casual players clicking “unsubscribe” on the Blizzard website is more dangerous than thousands of hardcore raiders sighing on Twitch that non-raiding rewards are too good.
9.1.5 is bringing a lot of necessary changes to the game that could benefit all players, but the covenant swapping stands to most benefit the higher end players, who have not even thought of unsubscribing.
9.1.5 needs to address gearing issues for solo players and alts, or it will just end up being fan service for the higher end players, and subscriber numbers will continue to plummet in the long wait for 9.2.
