@Mork
For those of you who DON'T understand the RL thing, let me spell it out for you:
- at 23, I DM'd a hardcore group of D'n'D p[layers
- we spent 6 - 8 hours playing once a week, and we spent anywhere from 4 to 16 hours doing set up and research
- if we were a group today, we'd play WoW, raid and I have little doubt we'd be on Ragnaros
NOW
- I have a 60-hour-a-week IT management job, and I'm on call (yecch); "hey guys gotta drop out of the raid because the BES server's down and the suits are whining" means you WON'T get invited back (and I agree with that, don't raid if you can't commit)
- I have kids; baseball practice, soccer, music lessons, etc. mean I might get 45 minutes to play at a time without having to exit and pick somebody up, drop somebody off, etc. (Your parents likely did this for you, too?)
- I can't stay up until 2:00 am and then get up at 6:00 am, that goes away once you're past thirty, sorry (you'll learn)

NOT whining, but Blizz really likes my $30 monthly on a credit card for two accounts (one for the kids) that get less playtime than your one. They want to keep me playing because people like me make it possible for people like you to have4 all that expensive raid content, so they need to make it fun for me too.
That's what they're trying to do (to stop the huge bleed of casuals out pf the game, hardcore only leave when RL changes), although I suggest that they go back to the Wrath formula because I never gave a damn about raiding in Wrath, the progression from normal to heroic to ICC 5-mans on three alts took me all the way to Cata.
The difficulty "spread" was right, Lich King was an awesome achievement that only good raiders got. (Recently got it on my 85 tank, IMHO they should NOT let you get Kingslayer once Cata came out as I have real respect for those who got it at level).