It seems to me that people of his mindset or those like @
Osmeric won't be happy until their preferred level of WoW attainment is the ONLY level you can aspire to. For whatever reason, they seem to take offense at there being higher harder content because it makes them feel bad somehow.
Another question I don't think has been adequately answered - when exactly was WoW so single player, or casual friendly, to the point where there wasn't some upper tier level player running around super powerful compared to "LFR heroes" or "world quest players"? People in T3 Naxx gear utterly deleted people in casual raid T1 gear, let alone dungeon blues. TBC upper PVP/Sunwell gear made you ridiculously strong. WotLK wasn't exactly super casual friendly for that either, as a mix of upper tier PVP gear and ICC 25H gear let you do ridiculous things, such as play Prot warrior in PVP/Arena and do well from what I remember talking to one such player.
For WoW's second era, Cataclysm made it fairly hard to get good gear earlier on - my first epic weapon there was a PVP 2hander - but I can't remember much aside from hearing about DS trinkets making PVP a joke for those who had PVE trinkets, like Vial of Shadows or Cunning of the Cruel. MoP, you still had a large gap in gear between those who raided then Heroic, normal and LFR. From what I know of WoD, sure the PVP gear was much more easily obtainable with Ashran, but that PVP gear wasn't terribly good in PVE since you lacked set bonuses.
WoW's third era, Legion BFA and SL, are probably the era some people would point to and say, "Us casuals don't like that," but... where exactly was WoW ever a level playing field? Sure, Legion had PVP stat templates etc, but the wider community hated it and it was canned in BFA.
You're looking for something that didn't exist, this mythical time in WoW where there weren't higher difficulties and tiers to aspire to or work towards. Where just messing around picking herbs and never setting foot in a true raid would somehow let you compete with people who'd been playing and gearing since launch.