As for the fun factor, I know it first-hand: I had been stuck at rank 5 for many, many seasons, playing what I wanted rather than what was considered ‘tier 1’ (from what I recall, Kasparov told a similar story), since I couldn’t bring myself to play the likes of that dumber-than-a-face-huntard-faceroll-goblen-rogue (I suppose that takes some skill to achieve that — I’ll concede this regarding the subject in general), undertaker hunter, mech mage, oil rogue, patron/pirate warrior and so on (I would sometimes pick some of those decks or their variations up after they had been nerfed and the bulk of those meta monkeys had abandoned them, though… I remember playing Malygos rogue with Thaurissan somewhere after WotOG, post-nerf patron warrior and a version of ‘zoo’ warlock with Sea Giants, as well as some peculiar hunter decks, although these might have been my low moments), so I would keep playing what was more or less fun… until I realised that it was no longer fun at all.
PS That was at Un’goro’s launch, also famous for the introduction of the ‘bright, vibrant, and colorful’ art style fit for dino movies targeted at five-year-old kids… but that’s another story, probably; this was timely enough: apparently, I was fortunate to have missed some much, much worse things that followed… But once again, that’s another story, a personal one and probably not very relevant here.