Your alts are all paladins; of course they don’t struggle! 
Seriously though; I’m not talking about regular stuff. I’m talking about the rares, the elite areas and such.
I saw the difference when Zaralek Caverns just opened; I was side by side with some ‘big 3’ players and they complete annihilated elite mobs, while it literally took me minutes per mob.
I think Tah simply wants progression, and anyone doing PvE content should understand that imho. Character growth is fun.
Besides that, Blizzard has introduced plenty of elite mobs in DF in world content where you get your butt handed to you if you try it solo and not well geared. The idea is obviously there will be more people, but content becomes obsolete over time (and sometimes very quickly). This content is pretty much dead for world players, which is quite tragic design. The desire to have a fair shot at everything which supposedly is ‘your’ content isn’t such an alien request I think.
There have to be limits to each arc though and that limit is always never enough for some players.
I’m 100% in favor of adding “adventurer gear” that’s useless in PvP and instances so open world players can chase a carrot, but there’s a 200 page discussion on the US forum about why splitting PvE gear into multiple categories is bad for the game and since I’m too dumb to understand why I’ll just approach the topic carefully.
Yes!
I’ve tried to understand what OP actually want, but I still don’t get it. It like full of controversial things:
Completely frustrated with this requirements. Based on it, you will be fine with set of the same WQ every day, each WQ gives you “+1 point” of power, and this power does nothing, since your character already powerful enough to do all this content. So just a number in your profile.
I haven’t read it but when I thought on it myself a while back, I realised it’d mean so many sets again if people want to play all content, even more so on multiple specs. That in itself seems like a major hassle, Blizzard has moved away from that design for good reason. I’m sure there are quite a few other, relevant issues that my brain can’t come up with. It seems this is pretty much the compromise.
And an edit, one of the things that caused this was when I thought about splitting raid and M+ gear too… and then world gear… yeah. Man. We’d need void storage accessible on the character itself lol.
No; the power would not do nothing.
It would make you more powerful, so you can do the content faster/more easily.
It would also allow you to tackle more challenging world content such as rares and elite mobs.
It definitely would do something.
Yes it’s a fair point.
That’s why special sets might not be the way to go.
But earning AP and choosing world content specific procs, abilities and stats could be a thing.
Think; artifact weapons or the Heart of Azeroth, but specifically created and aimed towards world content. If it would be a neck slot for instance; you could easily swap it out if you’re doing other content; not much hassle there.
I’d enjoy that yeah. I had no issues with AP myself, esp with the artifact weapons I thought it was awesome. I did appreciate the catch up mechanics for playing alts later tho lol, in that sense removing it opened up more freedom again for those who enjoy alts, or want to reroll.
True. But then again; you wouldn’t NEED it to do or complete the vast majority of world content. So playing on an alt would still be completely viable.
This is not like past expansions where ‘big 3’ progression ALSO depended on it.
For all I care they could make it account wide; I personally don’t really play alts much, but I’d be fine with it.
But doesn’t it work in this way already? What do we have as World Content right now:
All of this gives Adventurer and occasional Veteran paths gear, which is upgraded with Whelping and Drake crests, which are gathered from those activities also. So character is progressing and World Content become easier. What are missing parts here? Why it’s not enough? I can only think about more frequent WQ reset (back to daily again)
or tune down rares so it would be easier to have solo kills. Would it be enough for you?
That progression stops and elites are still not comfortably soloable for most classes. Rares are unsoloable for the vast, vast majority of classes and even if soloable; they take AGES to kill.
Progression currently is gated by LFR. We can do LFR wings and earn up to 6 coins per week. And with 2 coins you can buy a wyrm crest.
Why isn’t that reward just achievable through world content? Some weekly could reward it. Why are we ‘forced’ to raid to continue progressing? LFR has become a chore for me; it’s not difficult, but it’s not fun for me either. I am ‘forced’ to endure exactly the type of thing that ‘big 3’ players have been complaining about: Being forced to do chores.
But that’s just one side of the issue.
The other side is that progressing is fun. Just the experience of getting upgrades and becoming stronger is fun for most players.
If that type of fun stops a few weeks into a season; then what?
That’s what this thread focusses on; trying to keep that fun going all season long.
Because it’s how WoW worked most of the time before. WoW always had vertical progression system, it had linear path of PvE progression: leveling → open world content (dailies) → dungeons → raids. Each step takes some time and then the player advances to the next more difficult level with more rewards. So people were progressing from Open World to Dungeons, then to Raids, or stop at some level if they don’t want to go further.
Then Bliz started to change this progression and it’s not so linear anymore, but “branchy”. So now we have parallel branches of dungeons (M+) and raid. But those branches are not fully separated, so progression on one branch influence heavily the other branch. It already creates a lot of problems, when M+ become an easy way to get gear for raiding. For sure it’s still possible for do only raiding and avoid M+ totally, but you will fall behind a lot from other raiders, who uses M+ as gear source.
If I understood it right, you want Open World become the third PvE branch for progression, not just a step before M+/raiding. Bliz already tried to do that with AP, and it worked bad because of the reasons above. The player could ignore content from branch they didn’t like, but they will fall behind in content they do like in that case. And this is perfect situation when something become a “chore”, which burns people out and they unsubscribe.
The ultimate solution to all this problem is to have fully separated paths of progression in Open World, Dungeons and Raids. Like this gear is wearable only in Open World, this only inside dungeons and this only in raids. Then people could truly choose what they actually want to do, and ignore other branches. But it’s a big change for WoW, and it will potentially bring other problems, like player base separation, which in general should be avoided.
True! That’s why I think it is an interesting take for those who prefer world content. Something like that where you can in theory experience progress with your character for months would be lovely 
Practically, yes. But theoretically it’s kinda awful if players have to eat their peas (stern look from daddy Blizzard) to get to their dessert. I’m not sure what to think of carrots to force people into content they’d prefer not to do.
That would be the ultimate dream, yes. A true 4th endgame pillar.
But I will settle for just having worthwhile content for a lot longer than a few weeks.
This issue was already brought up and I responded to it:
As for this point:
This is similar to where world content players find themselves now. As I explained earlier:
So my question is: Why is that kind of ‘forcing a chore’ okay, but in the case of world content, it isn’t okay?
Because the world content/solo playerbase isn’t usually the vocal kind this issue is just being ignored. I don’t think that’s okay.
Dragonfail has the lowest player activity ever and yet people are saying it is selfish to add back AP, when the expansions that did have AP both performed significantly better. You have to be really bad at maths or very selfish to defend Dragonflight.
OP is right about everything and makes excellent arguments.
I don’t consider it forcing, because technically it’s stopping, not branching. You’ve progressed all the way up to LFR. If you don’t want go further into dungeons/raids, you stop here at the level of Open World. LFR is the step above Open World, not the parallel one.
That’s why we healers just throw our towel.
With every patch were getting nerved so that we make no progress since DF even if we farm our gear. Healing feels exactly the same like in S1. And the DPS is also just tickling enemies. It’s a feeling that gear doesn’t increase our power, it only raises numbers by a lot artificially