The character a new player presumably just finished doing all of the levelling with. And now they get to... yay, do it all again. Probably in the same class, because they presumably just did 110 levels of quests, and a few weeks worth of World Quest grinding, on the class they want to play.
And that's the thing. While they sit around waiting for most of a month for more World Quests to pop up, they're actively
not playing in BFA content. They're stuck in Legion, doing a rep grind.
The Legion rep requirements on Allied races is literally forcing our hypothetical new player to miss out on BFA content one way or the other. Either they do the Legion rep grinds and are kept away from BFA's new zones and levels... OR they go into the new BFA quests, and have to miss out on working on unlocking the new race.
And lastly...
You know what else would be "playing the game" to get access to the content? Tying it to BFA reps, or making it require you be up to BFA to gain access to. That's playing the game.