You were never supposed to force raiding on everybody. You weren’t even supposed to force dungeons on everybody.
There are millions of people on this game all looking to be called the best. Things like the World First documentary can attest to this. You weren’t supposed to force progression and make everybody run the same dungeons over and over again. All you had to do was give credit where credit was due. There are millions of people out there pursuing greatness, looking for adoration or something to do with the greatness they have attuned.
Dungeons were always meant to be hard, some dungeons were meant to be even harder, raids are supposed to be harder and some raids are supposed to be harder than those raids and some raids are supposed to be the hardest.
Ex.
Scholomance – 5 Man | Stratholme – 10 man
Karazhan – 10 man | Magtheridon – 30 man
Illidan – 40 man, sometimes he ignores the fact that there is a tank starts hunting everyone individually and you have to run and hide from him.
Lich King – 50 man, he has his own army and no one should die cause you’ll be turned into an undead and your raid has to kill you too.
Deathwing – 60 man, you fight him in abandoned Grim Batol with your group surrounding him at all sides tearing his armor literally piece by piece, using columns and holes and environment to do dodge his tail, his head, his wings, until he flies off and half your group is stuck on his back and the other riding drakes of different colors with the whole group fending off swarms of black dragons, drakes, whelps, twilight dragons, twilight cultist on mounts until you reach your destination for phase 2 or it’s a wipe.
No lockout resets until requested, everyone in the raid gets loot.
Fluidity and Accessibility has always been the vanity convenience that is the compromise of this game. The game should’ve always been painstakingly hard, Illidan should’ve flew, broke earth and hunt you down, if you’ve beaten these guys then you can truly call yourself the best.
All this compromise for “I can only raid Saturdays” “This is too hard” or “I don’t have 39 friends” has always been the games bane!
Not everyone needs to see Illidan or Deathwing, if you saw Warlord Na’jentus then you should be proud! The one thing Blizzard always needed to do was develop content for the casuals! Not merge it with the Elite!
Something based on a compromise is forever crippled. It’s like having one arm, one lip, one ear, and one less finger. And Blizzard is so far deep in their compromise that they can no longer see the errors in their way.
You don’t make a baby swim with Michael Phelps in the same competition. It’s just unfair everyone knows the baby will lose. The ideas in this real life metaphor applies to everything else, you don’t drink salt water for rehydration, you don’t go in the moonlight for the same nutrients as sunlight, you don’t compare the size of the universe to the sun, you don’t make a house with scatch tape, you don’t make a level 1 and expect him to kill a level 80 and you don’t make people with no skills raid where skills are needed.
Now where are casual in all this?
Things for Casuals: or Anybody
Fun and enjoyment
Guild Housing, Team Vehicles, Crafting, Gathering, World Events, City Raids, Ceremonies, Gambling, Mini Games, Sightseeing, Tournaments, World PvP, Cock Fighting (pet battles), Outdoor Dungeons, and if you have imagination you can add a ton more to that list and that’s where the development was supposed to happen.
Those with Greater Skill:
Heroes of the Fun world, and the better you are, the even better you'll be. You'll be alive the longest at the city raids, you'll defend the most, heal the most and make the most impact. You'll probably be needed more and you'll make more friends because of what you bring to the table.
I thought this was only a problem that we would have until WoW move from 20 devs to hundreds of devs. But I was wrong.
And none of that E.peen nonsense. Thats just the way life is. If you're funny you make people laugh, if you're tall you can reach longer, if you're humble you can learn more, if you have great talents at boxing you can probably win championships and if you have good teamwork you can probably do better with your team. All this we bring to the table, for all this people might want us, for all this make us like keys to other peoples locks, in other words "I have a problem and you have the solution". This could range from many things like I just need someone to talk to for a minute, or hey you're interesting I need someone in my life to ponder and learn from or you're exciting you keep me awake. Many, many stuff, in fact probably life is made of a billion variations of that.
This is the same case with an Mmo. Just like we in real life customize our selves, with our thoughts, our looks, our food and nutrients and how we spend our time. We're all looking for solutions those billions of variations of problems, and some people and in fact probably some us in this forum look to science of God to look for those answers to those billions of variations.
On a much smaller scale we probably play Mmo's because of what we think the Genre is good for us. Mmo's have a massive world, scaling of power and skill, money and possession and most unique of all to the genre, millions of other people. If everything we do is a customization of ourselves then our efforts, our skills, our possession, are just some of the many things we use to present ourselves to other players.
The problem with the compromise that Blizzard has started is that it takes away the requirement for any of those. It takes away the need for effort, it takes away the need for skill, it takes away the need to socialize, it takes away the need to learn better character, and to a lesser extent take away the need to earn money. This takes a way a huge hole in us and a pretty big gap in our thinkings, which can create problems in us, because we keep on playing with no longer caring about these things because in fact the game is starting to more and more become a waste of time the less you need it.
They kept compromising, when in fact a great robust world with fun and fantastical things to see and do unique from our world was all they needed to do.