The earlier patches / releases being a chore, which has then been lightened up in later patches has been a thing what, 5+ years now. Each and every time people come with this same "argument" that X is probably Y etc. Little do they know the entire argument falls apart on that "probably".
That being said, it's tiresome that the game is like that. The best example is probably Azerite gear and essences. Azerite gear was horrible on beta, horrible on release, and still rather mediocre throughout. Essences was a good idea, I ended up really enjoying it at the end, but the rep grind and attaining essences before echoes came for alts basically killed alts for a lot of people. By war more worse than covenants, though somewhat compareable to conduits, though they're not really at the same power level essences were.
Which is probably why the later patches in Legion and BFA were my favorites of those expansions. Same with MoP and WoD too, really..
People should really just not play the game on release and the first 6-12 months. Unsub if they want in that period, as well.
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Everything about this post is wrong.