I am going to violate my rule of not responding on a personal level, as I have deep respect and admiration for the Wolf.
Dear Wolf,
With the utmost respect, I maintain that you are the exception who proves the rule. I don’t doubt there are many like you. However, I have seen many daf yomis, individual learners, group learners, possibly hundreds of them. All good and even pious people. The vast majority have a solid yeshiva education from first grade through the great litvishe roshei yeshiva. Almost (not all, but almost all) have slowly or quickly took the lazy road to advance in a given mesechta.
The varied interpretations of the gemara, the rashis, the tosfot, and the rishonim are passed through the fine artscroll filter. The giver of the daf yomi barely prepares, what for? It’s all explained and can be given over on the fly. When I see a person learning from an artscroll gemara, he is almost surely not even looking at the side of the tzurat hadaf. These have been my observations since the first editions came out, and it has become ever prevalent.
So, I apologize if I offended you, it was unintentional. But for the generation that grew up without it, the artscroll has been the Waze of learning. One need not know where one is, one just needs to follow the prescribed instructions. I am of the opinion that on the grand scale, serious Torah learning has suffered as a result.