Just for the record, as much as I personally believe the the introduction of M+ significantly accelerated this development, in M+ the environment is significantly less toxic that it is in the RDF, especially in higher keys.
The RDF is filled with all the people that aren´t (yet) good enough for M+ but believe they are potential .1% title holders, the people that have no problem dissing someone for not being a progamer while obviously still leveling, that have nothing better to do but attempt to display how good they are and flame the rest for being terribad when they fail, because to them we´re all replaceable npcs that they´ll never interact with again, anyaway.
Wheras if you act like that in m+, especially the higher you go where the number of “Unbound” players looking for random groups can eventually be counted on both hands, then all you did was potentially brick your own key and /or guarantee that it´s only going to be harder to find groups to push with, because eventually everyone running 15+ already has you on ignore. 
Agreed. People don´t want to deal with the toxic BS anymore.
Source? Because raiderIO numbers do not support these claims last time I checked.
We will, but only once to get the achievement for the 13th delve, and then the system is dead for anyone with a decent guild that prefers an ancutal challenge.
You seem to be implying that heroiuc gear drops in teh delves themselves… that is factually incorrect, it only drops in teh weekly vault, champion gear drops in teh delves tehmselves… 1 item week *16 slots, IF you get lucky and can actually use the items offered because they aren´t duplicates (welcome to the Great Vault roulette we´ve all been playing since SL)
As it currently stands, in the very best case if you run +8 delves starting first day of the season (good luck with that endeavor) and have perfect lootluck, it will take you 4 months /16 weeks to gear your char in full heroic gear, without upgrades.
By that time, and decent raider capable of running heroic and +8s will already be a dozen itemlevels or more above anything the delver can ever hope to achieve without actively farming the raid and m+ for crests and valorstones, which they won´t be able to do because most of us will already be on our post-progression break… unless they want to pay a few hundred k for a carry.
The thing you seem to forget is that not everyone is satisfied with being a “high-end casual”, some of us want and can do more, and many of us also have more than 2 friends. And for those reasons alone, delves can and will never replace high end raiding or M+, because for good players on comms, they present no challenge even at the +8 level we were able to test on Beta which is where delve gearing stops.
And if you try to replace M+ and Raids with delves, literally millions of us WILL leave because the content we actually enjoyed no longer exists and the content we´re being offered is kindergarten level.
And I highly doubt that teh “Delve to world First”, “The Great Delve” “Mythic Delve invitational” will ever be a thing for exactly those reasons, and the RWF, TGP, AWC and MDI are large events that regularly garner not only a high viewership, but also directly bring players into the game.
Watching some group of 3 casuals wipe tehmselves to poverty in a +12 because they all can´t remember to pick up the breathing bubbles may have a similar entertainment value, but it´s vers much akin to watching the Muppet Show while the other is a Hollywood Blockbuster.
Again, I think delves are a great idea for single players and small groups that jsut want to smash back a few beers and run a dungeon… but even suggesting that they will somehow replace raids and M+ for those that enjoy that content is absolutely ludicrous.
