I think there are far more people like me who just want to accessorize their characters and see content then there are people who want to be “challenged” – which I think is just another way of saying die a lot.

Which would pretty much be yet another excellent reason for them to stfu.

Raiding should have progression, and it should get easier over time to open it up more.
That would be the kind of thinking which GC refers to as “I just don’t know if that game exists anymore.”

The challenge nowadays, as you implied, is in the particular achievements tied to the encounters, not the barebones basic one. Doesn’t mean Blizz couldn’t change their minds again, but it appears to be their current thinking.

Raiding should have progression, and it should get easier over time to open it up more. However at current it is not challenging, it is set at a level that you can pug it successfully (how many Kara pugs got past Curator?). GC is wrong in many ways, and right in others. There is no way they can make a fight that will realistically stop a guild for months without making its tolerances incredibly tight (best in slot + stacked raid + full consumables + no errors), and RNG based, because otherwise the top guilds who already do all of the first bit, have the experience and skill to do it right and easily.

You make fights difficult by making them impossible, and forcing a gear up to challenge it, for example ZA or the 3 drake version of Obsidian. These let you tune much tighter, and can force massive compromises on you (imagine having to do a 25 man raid with 10 people so you have 3x 5 man groups to do something else, each designed for 10 man). These are all doable, a 5 man pug I was in recently hit 9.6k dps, in contrast the 10 man I pugged Naxx with hit 9.2k, so its possible to adjust difficulty by forcing fights to be interesting rather than simply numbers checks.