The actual stakes are Luffy's personal journey, you mong. You didn't read 100 volumes of this shit because you're concerned about the state of the World Government. No, you read it because you're invested in Luffy's journey to find the One Piece.
Luffy's Journey to find The One Piece has been revealed to be intrinsically connected with with the State of the World Government. We have known that since Whitebeard's death when he directly stated that One Piece exists and thinks to himself. "When One Piece is found what is there will shake the very foundation of the world."
The World Government is deathly afraid of what is on Laugh Tale and will do everything in their power to keep people from getting there again, Luffy's personal journey to The One Piece has always put him in an inevitable collision course with the World Government, the moment he gets Road Glyph 4 the World Government drops everything and sets every gun, every marine, every resource on him.
Of course Blackbeard does the same the moment he finds out Luffy has 4 Road Glyphs and Vice Versa. That was the nature of The Balance of Power that came to be post-Roger's execution. The Moment the World Government makes a move to Laugh Tale the Yonko move to stop them, The Moment a Yonko moves for it, the other 3 Yonko and the Government go after them.
Previous to that nobody even knew that Laugh Tale even existed, Gol D. Rodger went to Road Star Island Twice, the first time he thought it was the end of the line..then he found out about the 4 Road Glyphs and that there was an Island that nobody knew about, Do you think that really revealing why the World Government is so deathly afraid of Laugh Tale and the History of the world -after- Luffy has beaten Blackbeard and the World Government would be a good climax a bunch of exposition after The final bosses are dead?
unless Oda pulls a "the real one piece were the friends you made along the way" at which point I'll just blow my brains out)
This has explicitly been debunked several times over at this point, we have seen (through Oden's eyes) that One Piece explicitly exists and that the True History of the world is etched in stone there. We just don't know what that history actually is as of yet.