So these weekly quests are really stupid, especially this week "give me 2500 nethershards and I'll give you 2499 back, in case by week 4 you didn't know nethershards were a thing" but I am glad for them for 2 reasons:
1. It will make getting exalted on alts for the mount WAY easier. A series of super short and easy quests that give 1500 rep each? Yes please. Suramar campaign was much cooler story wise, but holy hell if that isn't the WORST thing to do on alts. And it gates a TON of AP (just from the Gul'Dan quest) and a super useful item (self rez every 30 min). It is also just nice to get big chunks of rep sometimes, as opposed to Suramar's "finish a major questline, here's 100 rep, do a blue elite WQ, here's 250"
2. It protected people against themselves. People are self destructive in WoW, if class mounts were available on day 1, imagine the people going crazy farming treasure chests non-stop, then complaining about what a crazy grind blizz implemented. With this 12 week gating, people will close in on exalted without really thinking about it, and it softens the blow of the "grind" since it happens passively.
And while these quests are lame, this truly is the first alt friendly thing they've implemented in legion, which is great when it is tied to class mounts. 12 weeks from now you'll be able to get ~24k rep in one day just from these 1-10 min quests, which gets you quite close to the mount. My main might've wanted more story a la Suramar, but my alts certainly don't hah.