Pretty sure Thunderlord quest is available to everyone who has Destiny 2, just like last time, so it's not paid content in the way you mean. Secondly, I think you're being quite unfair referring to casuals who couldn't be bothered to finish it last time, as it was a timed quest over the Christmas Holidays. Thousands of players were probably doing family Christmas stuff instead of playing Destiny every day. And before you start, I wasn't one of them. I have no life and got it on all 3 characters.

Let me elaborate you make a fair argument to be honest I respect that you think it was harsh referring to people as casuals. And you are right at Christmas people have less time at a busy time of the year. There was not intended to offend anyone. But nevertheless the Thunderlord was very lame quest in the first place which wasn't time consuming. Then they introduced the Thunderlord since an update was introduced for it to drop in the exotic engram pool of loot. One of my clanmates got the Thunderlord earlier last week as a dropped exotic engram whilst playing Gambit last week. It was great for him and exciting for him. But reintroducing the Thunderlord quest into Arc week which was supposed to be more exciting and new content is not what the community was expecting or paying for it or not. Like I said if it was Zalo Supercell as well as the Thunderlord that would of been something. But let's face it the cosmodrome Thunderlord and Zalo Supercell all the things talked about are D1 loot and D1 content. This Arc week is not introducing anything as a reason to do it in terms or reward and new content. And it was in annual pass roadmap. Whether or not it's available to all players or not. It was put in that roadmap as a selling point a marketing strategy.

For some reason Bungie seems averse to elemental kinetic weapons. Closest thing we’ve got is Arbalest for taking down shields, but... it’s a linear fusion and still qualifies as “kinetic”

Energy weapons are Elemental Primaries. There has never been an Elemental + Kinetic weapon in the history of Destiny

That’s where it gets confused. In D1 there was primary, special, and heavy weapons. They took those individual ammo types, and all had elemental types except kinetic weapons. All kinetic weapons used primary ammo, including exotics such as NLB and Uni. Elemental primaries used primary ammo. Now with D2, its been mixed up a little to be the kinetic, energy, and heavy slot. Individual weapons can take primary or special ammo yet be in the kinetic or energy slot. The big draw of Supercell was that it made your primary into an Arc type, so in D2 it would be in the kinetic slot. If they put it in the energy slot it just wouldn’t be as valuable as it was. Then there was Adept Raid Weapons and the like, that all replaced the first slot on your character with an elemental weapon. I’m saying that that is something that Bungie seems averse to doing again.

In D1 we had elemental primary's in Y1 of D2 these still existed but only in the Energy weapon slot. Then they added special weapons back into the game for those who preferred D1 set-up, so the Energy slot becomes Secondary and can contain elemental primary or special weapon A D2 version of Zhalo would be perfectly valid in the Energy slot. It would be as valuable as any other Exotic Primary that lives in the Secondary slot, there are already many in D2 I get that having 3 Arc weapons in an Arc Burn activity was more valuable in D1. But by definition a Kinetic weapon is a primary without an element so it makes no sense to talk of Elemental Kinetic weapons. In D2 the first slot is Kinetic only

It’s specifically an “Elemental Weapon in the Kinetic Slot.” It’s why I shortened it to “Elemental Kinetic”

Yeah understood but it's never going to happen in D2 because of the Energy slot

Some players including my gf began recently, like 1 month ago. I'm glad she can now get Thunderlord, as are many other newer players. There is absolutely nothing negative to come from this particular change.

Fair enough, but they could have added new content and also made Thunderlord available again.