I think the LFR is the real villain here, however the shared lockout played its part. As others mentioned. Instead of splitting the lockouts in Cata into 10 or 25, they should have split the lockouts in normal or heroic.
So you could do say 25HC and 10N on the same week, but not both on heroic or both on normal. 1 heroic lockout, 1 normal. That would have been great.
If T14 and T15 was in WotLK, there would have been pugs clearing fully normal and a large part of the heroic content.
There are sometimes 12/12 pugs on my server for T15.
In T14 my guild used pugs due to low roster (3-4 pugs) to achieve 5/6 HC in MSV.
Still, the issue is not that it is to hard. The issue is that the people that got the capability to make pugs, already got guilds and due to 1 lockout they are already saved with the guild. Pugging is just dead because of how the raidlockout system is designed, not the difficulty. Ultimately LFR was the killing blow to pugs. Since that ruined the incentive to run pugs. Why waste effort into making a pug when you can click a button and get free epics.
I think it is funny how blizzard is saying "LFR worked out fine, a lot of people are doing it!"
Yes! Because people feel forced to do it. If I could skip LFR in gear up process, I would, but I have to.
Recently dinged a new 90. Now I have to run nine, NINE lfrs each week. That is just so bloody annoying that i do not have time to do anything else on that alt. Spending almost 9 hours in queue as a result aswell.
Even though I do not need gear from MSV, I still have to do it for the sigils for the legendary.
I would be interested in seeing how many people would do LFRs if it didnt give any loot. Or if the epics was 5 man HC level, 463 ilvl. (which really they should be, LFR is not harder than 5 mans). How many people would run LFR then? How 'successful' would LFR be if it did not force people to do it? I would never ever ever ever step my foot into LFR if it didn't give me a significant advantage gearing up.
LFR should not give worthy loot.
LFR should not give pieces to the legendary quest chain.