I disagree, i think ultimately people pvp for fun. No gear is a loss of the rpg element and the grind is annoying (albeit far less then what you had in older expansions) but pvp itself isnt fun to a lot of people which is a lot more important.
I agree that the pvp gear system of honour and conquest/arena points needs to come back (and ideall in a wod-esque way) as it was extremely important to the character progression which drives a lot of people. Getting new gear which makes your abilities hit harder is fun (compared to the you now do 0.2% more damage), however stuff like MM hunters in wod will still be shit no matter how much you progess. It also got people into pvp because they wanted the gear for pve. But class design is what matters, the arena-tournament realm is still active, pvp servers for woltk in general are very populated - despite 0 character progression, if the pvp is fun people will play it.