I always thought it was a bit tinfoil hat of me to think this, but I keep believing it more and more.
This expansion seems to be designed to squeeze the most out of you like some free mobile game with mtx. I had never seen this much carry spam in the game, and even systems that were just leftover from previous expansions were deliberately changed to take longer to do. Not to mention the loot nerfs.
In Legion I remember the complaint about having to loot artifact power tokens then click them, iirc they changed it to automatically award you the AP. In BfA azerite was automatically added to your necklace. Great. Then for no apparent reason, they regressed even further than where they started, instead of clicking on the anima items you have to travel to your sanctum to deposit them.
Emissary Quests were automatically picked up as soon as you logged in, now you have to pick up and turn them in, again adding travel time.
Mission tables, the hated system from WoD has survived yet another expansion and this time, unlike previous expansions, you have to wait for your followers to heal, and if you don’t want to wait you pay! This is so blatantly ripped off monile gaming it sickens me that a developer as big as Blizzard, with the high quality games they’ve made, would put out such shallow gameplay taken straight from f2p mobile apps.
Cosmetics are gated through renown, not just rep or an achievement like previously.
Oh and world quests take longer to do and award little anima.
I like WoW, a lot of friends play it and I enjoy playing with them, but everywhere I look in Shadowlands I see unfinished, rushed, time-played focused decisions that don’t contribute in the slightest to meaningful RPG gameplay.
tl:dr SL is designed to squeeze time and gold out of you, down to the flight pathing