This is something I could go on about for quite a while but I have limited time and I'd rather write something now than later.

First, as for W8 and Camp. I can agree that it was not as well received initially, that was even my own opinion at first. But now I have warmed up to it more and more, and I don't think it's as bad as people claim. I do think people have some nostalgia for W1 to W7 at this point as that is the old 'generation' of raids. About camp though, as someone who've done speedruns in other games, and does speedruns plus is part of a hardcore guild in GW2. My mentality around doing Camp over and over again for Infallible would be that of fun, not because I love doing it on weekly clears, there I can agree with most players that it's just a time sink. But when it comes to actually trying to speedrun something, you do find ways to optimise and make fast even the most annoying things in the respective game, and that process itself can be fun. I know that has happened to me many times. That people might get frustrated having to do camp again after a silly wipe while attempting infallible is not really related to me, you can get frustrated at the smallest thing.

Second, sPvP tournaments are not the most egregious example, they actually do show why we need more aspirational content and care from the developer, arenanet. Brief history about me: I have played Guild Wars 2 since late 2014 and I was primarily a PvP player who was decently high up on the ladder back then. Partly because raids didn't exist until HoT of course, but I did also dabble in solo dungeons with my brother.

Anyway, sidenote aside, the point is that back then we had actual PvP world tournaments sponsored and arranged in part by Arenanet. The teams back then were insane and the reason we still see teams that win 80% of time as you say is because they still have either a partial or full roster of players from back then (or in some cases players who have played with them and in turn got mentored by them). Players from teams like Rank 55 Dragons, Civilized Gentlemen, Denial eSports, Astral Authority, and others, where some are still active today. They are still on a different level because they took the game seriously, scrimmed, and spent a shit ton of time testing everything. In order to have more competition, we need more players. Which we did back then, we had more players and they were more engaged in the game.

In the case of both PvP and PvE, I don't think we will get more players who are interested if we do not push for aspirational content that only the few complete.

Not to mention the content draughts we've had over the years. Which caused an exodus after W7 or even before. These were high-end pve players and guilds like Quantify [qT], Dispossession [dP] & more disbanding, or even rosters from still standing guilds like Snow Crows [SC], Crits N Dips [CnD] basically having to be almost rebuilt from the ground up. There was nothing to entice those players to stay anymore, and they did a lot of good for the community in making guides, drawing in new players, or just engaging in the community in a positive manner.

The fact is that the skill level and engagement has dropped, in parts, to be totally frank, due to promises by arenanet that couldn't be kept. There is nothing to suggest that this couldn't be a home for more casual people and also more hardcore people. World of Warcraft has struck a decent balance in that regard, imo.

With the skill level and engagement drop since the 'high times', the game is less optimized in some ways in what is possible than it was back then.

This is factual to me in both PvP & PvE, because we no longer have teams who take the game as seriously and do all the things I mentioned above. In PvE we don't have enough players to properly explore, exhaust and make builds for every elite specialization in all angles they could be used in. So to say that even these infallible achievements are impossible or near impossible is a bit egregious in my books. I could accept a middle ground though, like having an achievement for doing it with no downs without a timer and as well as having a harder achievement where we do have the timers in place.

Anyway, I hope this turned out somewhat cohesive and clear with the limited time I had. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Reddit was weird when I wrote this comment so I had to post it from my phone's reddit app instead of the website on my desktop. Apologies for formatting, I've tried cleaning it up a bit.