We were told Hrothgar and Viera were designed differently from the very start and that these things would be difficult. Obviously they care about textures when they announced a graphics update for 7.0 and changed them in 2.0 dungeons.

There are no relic steps for EW because the relics are not normally released until the 6.25 patch.

The "dumbing down and homogenization" can be seen from another perspective which is that they want to make jobs less annoying to play, such as stopping you from having to aim a cone while pulling mobs on a tank. I agree it's starting to go too far but their intention is just to make it less annoying.