I personally feel that people outside of Warmane's community tend to hear all about how Icecrown functions, because it's seen as the worst possible example Warmane has to offer, and as a result, is the prime choice of representation by anyone who wishes to hate on or talk smack about the server. Which, I personally, find to be an interesting choice because it was a realm merged of two other realms like it (with the exception of having xp rates lowered from before, the prior x10) who were realms that were intended to carry on for players who lost all the things they had invested money into during the "Molten era". Since the inception of Icecrown, we have not once directly duplicated its design or strategy.
Every realm that has been created since then, including TBC realms (rip), have never exceeded beyond the strategy that our recent Frostmourne seasonal realm employed: Items added to the store once enough of them were farmed within the game.
The restrictive dropped # requirement in addition to the progressive nature of each of the realms that have had this system (TBC included) has meant that the window in which that "current bis" items in some capacity (as in, not all of them, but some) are available on the store were there only for a few weeks at most prior to the new season/raid tier. Which meant that the items were available when that content was dead and the players were ready to move on. Very few items remained relevant. There were some, but very few. And this has been the furthest extent that it has gone at its maximum value.
- Even in this situation, there have been people within the community who have been unhappy on both sides of the isle; those who want more, and those who want less.
The reason for this design is for a few reasons, but the primary two are #1 the realms need to be able to fund themselves, and #2 we don't want to push it too far because we realize that Icecrown's system is not for everyone, and most people who don't mind that will end up playing on that realm at some point anyway.
Funding is a contentious topic, for many obvious reasons, but also in part because of the effectiveness of a variety of strategies and what we are and are not willing to do. An example of something that we wouldn't really be willing to do, especially in the face of attempting to peel back away from Icecrown-esque design, is to gate something like dual-spec behind a paywall. That's not friendly design, at all. But let's say you were suggesting that paying money for it is optional to its gold cost instead. Then what is the likelyhood that someone would spend money on that? Likely the top 1% that can't wait to grind up the gold to get it immediately, in order to gain an advantage (p2w, you know), or the 1% that just doesn't give a damn and has money coming out their ears. Where would that put the rest of the player-base? Yeah, they may not care about enough about the other two mentioned groups of people to spend money about it, but what about their perception of the server due to the fact that we were willing to put such a thing on the shop for $$$? Not good, I don't think.
Furthermore, even with Frostmourne's strategy, it is not exactly a gold mine. The amount of people you may think that invest in the items available to them on the store is likely more than those who actually do. That in itself is a hurdle to overcome in terms of funds. Not because we want people to buy more items, but because more funding means more that we can do for our servers and community, which I see you understand.
- I suppose it is also worth mentioning that some of the intention behind Frostmourne's item shop strategy was also to enable an alternative source of "catch-up", and whether it is ideal, of course, has opinions on both sides of the isle as mentioned above.
Now, I know I did kind-of single out only one of the things you mentioned, but I felt it was important to address some potential misconceptions and what our goals are. That, and all of the above, being said, we've not set anything in stone as of yet. We would like to provide the best possible experience with the least amount of invasive systems as possible. On the sheer numbers scale in which we have to operate most of the time, things can get quite expensive. But we'll see how things turn out. We appreciate the thoughts and feedback; from you and everyone else who is interested in such a project and what they'd be interested to see come out of it. We're excited to have a new and interesting experience too, and we'd love for it to work out in all ways as best as possible. Also, please understand, that this is precisely why we are taking our time on it and not rushing it - in addition to sharing what we're working on, so we can get feedback and thoughts on the project.