Well done.Hard disagree lol.
How does the TBC leveling content, dungeon content, season one arena content and "entry level raiding" content not stand on it's own compared to phase 2? You realize that all Phase 2 content brings is two raids and an additional arena season?
There was a big problem with TBC launch in that over 15 years ago you had T4, T5 and a T6 raid (not really on Hyjal) all in at once. You know where this caused problems? Arena and it's implications with PvE content. Getting season 1 gear (which is T4 equivalent) made the gearing
in TBC fucking retarded when both T4 and T5 existed at the same time.
PvE gear dominated PvP for a long ass time and isn't anything new, but part of the reason it was so bad in TBC is because the PvE content was literally 1 to 1.5 seasons ahead of the PvP gear in gear progression.
It makes logical sense, and breaking up T4, T5, T6 and Sunwell content is the best approach IMO. This makes the PvP seasons line up properly with the raid release content, and your concerns about T4 not being able to have substance is sort of silly if I'm being honest. It's not like they have to adhere to ~6 months between seasons either, T4 could literally last 3-4 months if they wanted to, with everything else being released in a more predictable fashion that we are all accustom too. If you're worried about having excessive amount of time to farm previous content invalidating future release content, I think you're approaching the Classic version of these games wrong to begin with. They said they're going to use some of the higher difficulty versions of the instances themselves, and I think that's good enough.
TBC is a lot more mechanically challenging than Naxxaramas was, and with most raids behaving at the bare baseline of Naxxaramas and above, there's going to be a lot more challenge for those out there. Is it anywhere close to retail? No. But if you're playing 15 year old content for challenging content, I don't know what to tell you.
I'd have to go back and find interviews but Blizzard themselves at the time said one of their biggest regrets with some of the expansions they did (including TBC) was how front loaded TBC was, with a giant gap between Black Temple and SWP.
+Internet points for you.