The hundreds of thousands of viewers it attracts every single time would beg to differ.
Of all the “E-sport” part of WoW, that’s the one the community cares the most about.
Of course there are the players who don’t care about competition whatsoever but such a conversation isn’t really for them in the first place.
I mean I get where you are coming from, but in a way being “unfair” like that is the best way to make an actual WoW competition.
The gearing process is part of the game. If you are playing something where gear is irrelevant then you are not playing WoW.
This might even be why the RTWF attracts significantly more attention than the “Real E-sport” that are supposed to be the MDI and the arena tournaments.
Because those guys are actually playing a competition within WoW not something unrelated to the game on a fake server with characters that don’t really exist.