Okay, as a software developer, I can tell you, an arbitrary standard like "working as intended in 7 days" is one of those things managers like to throw around that bear little resemblance to reality. Some bugs take 5 seconds to fix, some take 5 months, and it's not always obvious which are which right away. As for the idea that at some point a programmer has to spend time on a companion pet, you're only correct insofar as at some point in the past, programmers had to implement the entire companion pet system, and said system of course requires maintenence, but beyond that, the programmers likely don't have to spend any time on it; artists should be able to implement whatever animations they want in the framework created by programmers.

As a reformed hardcore raider with many friends who are also raiders, I can assure you, I'm not badmouthing them, nor am I saying the developers should neglect them; raiding content is an essential part of the game. The key word being "part."

What I am doing is badmouthing any person who thinks that 100% of Blizzard's resources should be spent on things that appeal to them. WoW is a big game; it has a lot of different things that appeal to a lot of different types of players. Catering to as many of them as it can is exactly why Blizzard has had so much success with the game.