We don't agree and that's fine. I think "playing the game" is interacting with said feature, not doing my chores so that I can interact with said feature eventually. In your "RPG that requires/rewards tasks"
To me, the "task" is designing a house. The "reward" is a well designed house that I enjoy. I didn't choose to interact with housing to go to my garrison (already maxed out thankfully) and buy the only mug...No, not every system works this way. You used to have to unlock your pvp talents with honor lvl, now they are just freely given. Why? because reducing the required chores a player feels they need to do in order to use a feature is good. I don't think this is yet another system wow needs to gatekeep and time sink. I think if people are given most decor, they will sink the time and have fun with it along the way. I've been playing for a while so I have tons of legacy currency/rep so you can miss me with that strawman too. I've played the game. Ask yourself this, the people that are excited for legacy currency/reps, are those the people that already have that stuff? How do you think new and returning players feel? Is it good for the health of the game to have a core advertised feature so heavily restricted?
Since you started this thread for judging other peoples houses/lack of creativity how about a challenge? Design a cool and unique exterior/interior using only assets you can buy in the neighborhood.
Oh also Flying. Remember how flying was only at max lvl. Then there was pathfinder achieve for flying unlock where you had to have all the story/reps/achieves done? Then they made the pathfinder achieve a little easier.. Then they dropped it entirely. Flying available for free! Imagine if when dragonflight released with dragon flying you had to do a 3 hour 20 year old quest line and farm a bunch of old rep to upgrade/get cosmetics..Insane.
Remember when they made the Legion allied races require all the achieves and reps? Then they realized it was a horrible idea to gatekeep so they just made it a small questline.
Lets progress systems by interacting with those systems.