I agree with you 100%.
There is a quote that i love "You either die as a community oriented MMoRPG or live enough to become a f*cking E-sport oriented game"
I think the vast majority of the community dislike retail wow (that is why we are here after all) but i insist that the main problem is that the game become elitist (aka Raider.IO plebs) rather than the loot system.
I personally think that the loot should be something worth and meaningful, not a epic purple spam. The feel of having a epic drop should be one of the most satisfying part of the game. In other words, i dont like piñatas "everybody get a prize", i want shout yeahhh when the purple drop, not a "meh, +2 ilvl but low my haste...i will disenchant).
But as i said before, most of your fear is the community not helping people who is casual, remember that the content scale with level, so there will plenty of people wanting to make groups to do content with you because, whatever your level is, all the content will be meaningful.
I hope so, because a wow or a wow clone enters, I prefer the wow, because I have been in that game for years and at least there I can do more things apart from pvp or pve.
I hope they keep in mind that if you create an armor or weapon it is at a similar level, but not higher; The kind that you fall for playing dungeons or hunting in the world.
Since in wow at least, creating items is wasting time and gold.