It’s not a secret that the vast majority of players in the world are casual gamers. That’s also true for WoW’s player base. However, they’re also the most fickle. As in that they can give up the game at the drop of a hat, and just swap to something else.
The core gamers in the world are a very, very, tiny minority. Yet they’re also the ones who are the most loyal to the games they play, and they spend a lot more time in the game(s) they’re loyal to compared to the casual players.
It’s been a topic for discussion in the video game dev industry for decades.
But so the thing is, the harder it is, the more for core gamers it tends to count as. Since the harder it is, the more effort is required to “clear it” (just count it as synonymous with getting better for WoW, but this example is about games in general). Conversely, it also means that the easier it is, and the more happy-go-lucky the reward design is, the more casual-oriented is what it counts as.
So mythic raiding and rated PvP is typically counted as for the core gamers, due to its difficulty and effort required to “clear it”. While the world content, LFR and unrated PvP is typically what counts as for the casual-oriented, due to its all-inclusive reward designs (meaning you don’t need to play well to get rewards, and all rewards from it are non-exclusive) and generally lower level of skill displayed & required in the gameplay (except for the premades of course, but that’s a story for another day).
So the problem with arena isn’t its difficulty. It’s meant to be increasingly harder the higher up you go, and even though people are dropping rating for ez conq farm, that’s still true and it’s still tougher to climb higher the higher up you go, since the tougher opponents on low ratings are either not geared, playing an alt which they’re not as good at, or they’re simply the exception to the rule due to how uncommon it actually is.
The problem lies more with the reward design for WoW’s rated PvP. It’s quite literally a game mode that’s supposed to be an esport, but they’re not developing it as an esport. So it’s stuck in a place where casuals are angry, and the core gamers are unsatisfied. What Blizzard needs to do, is start pushing proper esports formats and support for 3rd-party organizers who can host tournaments more often than Blizzard does it.
WoW’s rated PvP is designed to be too hard for casuals. But that doesn’t mean Blizzard should make it easier for the casuals. It just means Blizzard needs to turn it into an esport and build an audience base, by letting 3rd-party organizers take a share of that pie. Blizzard is just being unbelievably greedy with the game and refuses to turn it into a proper esport because they won’t develop nor license out proper tournaments to be held by other organizers.
In other words, by building a proper audience for it, it gives the casual players something to aim at, and increases the chances of turning them into core gamers since they start dreaming about becoming as good as what they see.
It’s the same formula as for any sport in the world, like football for example. People of all ages watch the football matches and it makes many people, both adults and kids, dream about becoming as good, and so it turns more people into football players. Because the path they followed made them dream about it first. WoW doesn’t have anything close to that, because Blizzard holds it all in-house and does barely anything with it.