I thought catch-up patching was, like, a normal thing or something. Note, I'm not even through ARR content, so maybe I'm not understanding what's going on here. But near as I can tell, it sounds like they're making it easier to catch up to end game, because all anybody ever cares about in these games in running the newest latest bestest content. So you can either catch up and stay with the end game group, doing stuff as it comes out, keeping you character up to speed. Or you can slack off and it'll be "easier" later when nobody really cares because they've moved on to the next greatest thing.

At least that's what I thought was happening.