WoD was worse or BFA was worse depending on who you ask and yeah, people misremember.
But with that said, NOTHING compares to Shadowlands. Shadowlands easily outdo both WoD and BFA in terms of utter awful. That and Players quit in masse (especially after 9.1 release) when it was obvious the expansion was not improving with major patches plus the massive near-1 year delays between major patches, and by the time they tried to start fixing their trainwreck of a game (patch 9.1.5), it was too little too late.
I argue WoW still hasn’t recovered (in terms of reputation or players) since the absolute unmitigated disaster that was Shadowlands. That alone tells you the colossal steaming pile that Shadowlands really was and the reason Blizzard doesn’t want to announce Dragonflight or The War Within sales (because they are way lower than other expansions. DF and TWW are huge improvements over SL gameplay-wise, but most people just completely dropped retail after SL and refuse to return, especially after being dealt two bad expansions back-to-back).