Obligatory "Not a QQ"
The Blue tweet on the main page about Heirlooms really drove home the point to me that Blizzard either doesn't pay any attention to player trends or flat out ignores them.
It wasn't until Cata I actually felt "punished" for not playing 100% dire focused the whole expansion. I'm going to generalize for a moment and speak for the "rule" not the exceptions here. It seems that if you didn't start the expansion and push content with 1 character the whole time than your pretty boned. If you're wanting at this point to break into SoO you're most likely going to look at your pathway and realize it's not fucking worth it.
Legendary cloak - Mandatory
Random invite - 540+ ilvl Mandatory
Linked Achievements - Often Mandatory
To me, their retort to all of this is "The options and tools are there! LFR, Flex.... uh... LFR, You can do it!" Well, sure I suppose if you could LFR. The wait times are often fucking painful. There isn't a real "success" and you barely can say one "grows" as a player or anywhere near proficient in LFR.
I understand that it is easier if you have a solid base of support, ie other players and friends who are willing to go with you, but in reality considering seemingly EVERYONE is having attendance issues at this point, support is hard to find.
This isn't a complaint about LFR, or grinding, or any one thing specific. It just baffles me that Blizzard seems to deny this happens. I know it isn't entirely on them that a large section of their base gets bored and wonders off leaving another section sort of boned but shouldn't they have put SOMETHING in by now? I might only "feel" that it was different during Wrath because of everything being a bit slower paced and isolated to your specific server. I don't know. To me, it really is like they live in their own reality where what the majority end up doing isn't their fault.
Not sure I got this across as well as I wanted.