So has SE confirmed they don't want us playing the game?

[Moogly]

Perhaps it's a cross promotion with Blizzard. They just really, really want people to check out Battle for Azeroth.

Well people who got bored of farming light in Pagos, will instead go farm azerite/rng loot in WoW.

I rather keep farming light lol (got my war main to 120 and quickly got fed up during the heroics farming process - unsubbed, again)

Oh, and about OP, odd since I didn't have any of the problems he's mentionning : even ran that rising instance twice in a row.
I was in a Pagos, and at 5 PM we had a server message saying the Rising event had started. I went there immediately after my Pagos run and npc was there.