You got Lei Shen one day after Dark Animus () and otherwise you didn't raid at the relevant level where you could have seen and felt the ilvl difference between casuals and raiders. You yourself have admitted that you as a casual (as you didn't raid HC back then) didn't perceive the ilvl difference between yourself and high level players, which definitely existed btw, so which kind of brings me back to the underlying idea that if casuals are (on purpose or not) clueless then what makes you think they care/know about the fact they are not at the same ilvl as some others?
But more importantly, the ilvl loot-pinata is first and foremost paramount to casuals themselves - they get to a certain ilvl very fast and easily and then try to do content that would offer them upgrades. Often this content is high level content and they are not even slightly capable of doing it which is why the rest of the playerbase creates tools to weed out the majority of casuals who are just too trash for their ilvl. Then those casuals either quit or go around complaining on forums (even here) about how elitism ruins this game while not realising that if they had lower ilvl, maybe that +5 would look more appealing while being definitely more relevant to their skill-level as well.