Takes far less effort to get a max level character now than it did before.
With refer a friend (300% exp), you can have a new max level character over the weekend, and there are few/no time-consuming achievements like Grand Marshall anymore. The difficulty level isnt spread out right now either, all content is pugged regularly.
To compare it to how it was back in the day... it would be the same as there being no PVP titles/ranking system, and if Molten Core had 2-3 dozen pugs successfully run it every day on every single server. Naxxramas is all there is right now, and pugs run it fine with a little gear and organization in both 10 and 25 man forms so the best gear in the game is fairly trivial to get as long as you can get into the groups.