Let's be careful addressing actual causes here.
I get the impression Legion has suffered from reduced development budget, even compared to WoD. The grind can be seen as a mechanism for coping with this constraint, trying to extend the relevance of the content that does exist. Without the grind, the paucity of distinct content could become even more painful.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I agree with Ion, it's mostly on the raiders themselves. It's 2005 all over again when people were losing jobs and missing priority things because they were playing WoW. It's not WoW's fault that you pushed yourself this way.
I'm sorry that the state of the competitive-style is so grueling, but it's all a choice. Own your decisions
I don't disagree that just removing grinds and doing nothing instead would make things worse, not better, but frankly, nobody cares. Are things good? No. Or, rather, we'll see after the expansion ends, but... And if they aren't good, it's on them.
- - - Updated - - -
Yeah, and that only started existing in huge numbers in WoD and now Legion (was much tamer before according to the numbers, the spikes and declines were never that sharp).
- - - Updated - - -
Of course we knew. We had (and continue to have) activity levels.
Precisely. Just because it is there doesn't mean it has to be consumed immediately. Same with food. Just because you filled the fridge and pantry doesn't mean you need to eat it all in the first weekend. Portion control applies to gaming as well. Also, there is such a tiny portion of the playerbase this applies to, not even sure why the OP felt it necessary to make a big thing of it.
Brings to mind a paraphrased quote:
the top of the pve ladder has been going, for literally years, into an ever crasier escalation of what is required to be top at pve.
before it was, farm stuff, farm food, farm gear, spend hours raiding
it became: have one reroll do split raids.
last xpac, it again escalated to, 4-5 split raids...
this xpac, some guilds went 5-6 split raids with all artefact at 54...
I am not talking about guilds that pretend to be good and tried to emulate the top 10 by asking for 2-3 plit raids. They are currently breaking down on my server, fast.
This escalation of things have been created by guilds at the top. the raid leaders are responsible for the expectation they are setting, not blizzard.
Hopefully, those guild will do something like agree to a charter.
field no more than 30 characters per guild
no split run
The solution should be that sites like wowprogress.com put in a different ladder for guilds that follow this charter and for blizzard to enhance their api to be able to track if guilds are split raiding and if more than 30 characters participate in raid activity within a guild. (stop: this can obviously be tweaked to take into account trial players etc, dont judge get a mental block here)
The solution will come from both wowprogress and blizzard API and the players.
I am both the Lady of Dusk, Vheliana Nightwing & Dark Priestess of Lust, Loreleî Legace!
~~ ~~
<3 ~ I am also the ever-enticing leader of <The Coven of Dusk Desires> on Moon Guard!
No, there are two sides and Blizzard is equally, if not more responsible for their side of the arms race. They're the ones who ratcheted up encounter complexity to new levels of Charlie Foxtrot to punish players for installing addons. They're the ones who decided having good gear from the previous raid wasn't going to be enough to clear the new raid. They deleted Old Heroic 10 and then proceeded to uptune Mythic 20 to Naxx40 levels of absurdity. They decided to have 125 item level gap in a single tier. They did all of this stuff, they are not blameless.
OMG 13:37 - Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Cleave unto me, and I shall grant to thee the blessing of eternal salvation."
And His disciples said unto Him, "Can we get Kings instead?"
Organized raiding was not a minority thing, high-end raiding was. The difference is that the game was more simple back then, and this helped to create a more reasonable common ground for everyone, even if we still had some guilds with high requirements, grind and silly stuff. It was also a growing game, so it was natural to have a growing community basically on any aspect of the game that we talk about.
But this wall you talk about is a consequence not a cause, and legion just created the perfect scenario to reinforce it. It's silly to blame competitive players because they just adapt to whatever the game throws their way, just as it's silly to blame the devs because they just design a game that trys to give options for a diverse spectrum of players.
My criticism to Blizzard is that over the years they made a lot of good improvements to make raids accessible but they did nothing to improve or support organized raiding. High-end raiders keep the mentality from 10 years ago because high-end raiding didn't change over the years other than raid size now and then while everything else around it has been moving on a totally different direction. They should either be honest and kill it or make some big changes to make it a real competition with a reasonable and healthy set of rules for everyone (for example, a mode that is not driven by gear, more similar to PvP).
"Mastery Haste will fix it."
Actually she's right. Organized raiding has always been a minority thing, and continues to do so. Wowprogress lists ~20.000 guilds that have killed Skorpyron hc. Even if we are generous and assume 30 players in every raid, that's still a small minority. Nonheroic kills would have to be a lot higher to disprove that claim.
Here some more food for thought for people that keep making all these stupid comparisons (looking a terrible all the posts about bicycles, running, and rape):
It has been shown that video games, and WoW in particular, have very addictive aspects. So much so that it is at the point that some players have gotten divorced, lost their jobs, and even died. We have regulations for things that cause these situations, we even have laws against them as well as PSA announcements and commercials speaking of the ill effects caused...from gambling to drinking to smoking. Now I'm not saying tonregulate how many hours we can play or outright ban gaming. What I am saying is, put some thought behind what you are typing before hitting "Post" as most of this forum is people typing with gut reactions and little thought.
You say casuals like AP because it gives them something to work for. Something like what? Honestly?
And to be fair when I say casual I mean someone who mainly focuses on WQs, other solo content and maybe some PUG LFR and Normal raids for a few hours a week. So for that kind of person what kind of reward is the few percentage of AP points giving them? So they can beat LFR and Normal raids faster?
The underlying point here is that the theme of the expansion is that in order for the champions of azeroth to beat the legion, they need super powerful weapons. And originally in WOW this is why raids only had one difficulty because that was supposed to be the hardest content in the game. So for those playing the hardest content of course there had to be a means of players advancing the power of their characters through progression to beat that harder content. But a casual technically is never going to seriously attempt this so why do they need all the extra power?
It is fine that people like this sense of progression for whatever content they do but if they aren't going to do harder stuff then there is really no need for them to get large boosts to power. Balancing the reward of player power based on harder levels of content has always been the way the game worked in the past. But Blizzard decided to start showering all characters with the ability to gain powerful increases to power whether they were going to use it or needed it or not. If you only have so much time a week and like to do other things other than raiding, what on earth do you need the large numbers of AP, the TF/WF and legendaries for? And why should you care if people who choose to do harder content get bigger rewards for their efforts?
The game gets oversimplified and easy, shame on the devs for catering to the casuals.
The game gets hard content that takes skill and dedication to clear, shame on the Devs for catering to the elite.
What do you people even WANT??
Me neither but there is a vocal minority of people that feel like they have to "beat the game" and do everything as quickly as possible. It's like going to an all you can eat buffet, and rather than pacing yourself, eating 10 plates full of food and then spending a half hour in the bathroom puking.