Originally Posted by
Wilfire
Blizzard wanted M+ and raiding to be alternative paths of progression. Unfortunately they ran into the same problem as they did when they introduced arenas in TBC.
They can't balance the classes around raiding because it will affect M+. They can't balance the classes around M+ because it will affect raiding.
There are sizeable raiding-exclusive and m+-exclusive populations. They can't prioritize one over the other because it will cause subscriber losses in the long run.
Raiding can't award powerful items because it will make raiding mandatory for M+ players. M+ can't award powerful items because it will make M+ mandatory for raiders. This is also why tier sets don't fit into the current design paradigm. When they tried to have unique and powerful rewards from different forms of content, Shadowmourne in WotLK arenas happened.
There is an answer to this but no one wants to hear it. Templates for M+ and raiding. But since WoW's carrot on a stick is gear progression, most people won't stick around if you remove tangible gear rewards. If people don't feel their characters get stronger they'll start asking, what's the point of doing this? This is especially true in modern WoW's gear-centric RNGforged / corrupted design.
Once the momentum from Legion wears off and more and more people realize that the current design is boring and unbalanced, participation will plummet. This is exactly what happened with arenas and rated PvP in general. Once people realized that Blizzard would never sacrifice raid balance in favor of PvP balance, they left. The initial hype from TBC sustained it into MoP but in WoD participation just got destroyed and never recovered. And back during the TBC-WoD period there was a much higher population to sustain continued arena participation.
Remember when Arena World Championship was Blizzard's big event? Nobody gives a shit about that anymore. It's all about the Mythic Dungeon Invitational now. But it can only last so long until bad balance starts to drive people away. The writing is already on the wall with some meta classes (looking at you, rogues) being almost mandatory.
This is a classic example of "try to please everyone and you won't please anyone". Except, well, people who play casually. Now is a great time to play casually. You have tons of different content to try and the problems don't become apparent until you reach the very top level. But the parallels between arena's decline and M+ are definitely there. M+ has already become more exclusionary and elitist compared to its Legion iteration.
Tl;dr: Ion, you can't have both tight tuning and different forms of endgame content. Pick one. Super-competitive e-sports with tight tuning or casual gameplay with a variety of game modes. Can't have both.