If this is just about the CT raids, as a relative new player who'd done the level 50 quests and the CT story line, I hope SE is not making CT required in AAR. Making it required in ShB to continue MSQ is fine, in my opinion.

The 100-ish 2.0+ quests are already dreadful enough to plow through. Even SE is considering trimming them, I don't see much would be removed, because they are needed to help understand the stories that follow. CT is such a nice story, and I would hate to see it being rushed through.

Moreover, I'm not sure the heavily nerfed CT raid is a good introduction of alliance raids to a new player. I read about the fights before I did them, but ended up very confused because many mechanics didn't happen due to the high DPS, and I was chasing this large group people most of the time, not knowing where I'm going and what is happening.