Elitism is not only affecting the community, it is starting to affect the devs

[linayar]

I should note here that hardcore doesn't just mean people who do savage or extreme.

I'm glad that you noted that, because it should be obvious that you're describing a wide range of people who have different interests.

There are people who spend a lot of time playing, but don't care about story and skip cutscenes.
There are people who do Savage/Ultimate who only log in one day each week to raid.

If you're going to lump all of them in as "hardcore," you might be left with an actual minority who spend merely 5 hours a week and don't care about story, raid, crafting/gathering, or anything else that might take a long time to do and don't care to engage the community either.