I think the story issues all come back around to a shift in Blizzard’s philosophy about the kind of narrative they want, and the kind of audience experience.
When Vanilla WoW was launched, the story was written for an RPG. In other words, the narrative focused on the in-game adventures of the players, with story beats mostly being small and chunked out so that players could take them at their own pace and in a variety of ways.
The story, in other words, was there as part of setting, with the plot being subordinated to the player’s adventures. The story was important because it gave richness to the world, but we weren’t primarily focused on what the various NPCs, especially the faction leaders, were up to.
In other words, the writers were primarily focused on world building and creating an environment where players could tell their own stories.
That has morphed over the years. Now, it seems like the writers are primarily interested in the adventures of the NPCs. This is reflected in bringing on board writers like novelist Christie Golden, who is naturally interested in long-form storytelling and the characters that she has built upon over many years. It is also reflected in the designer’s references to touchstones such as Game of Thrones.
In other words, the writers are now primarily interested in telling us a story.
I think it is a complete reversal in the relationship between player and story. And I think one of the consequences is that Blizzard therefore feels they need to keep making the story more and more dramatic to hold our attention, since they have turned us into, basically, a passive audience.
So I’m not interested in pointing at particular plot moments to identify “what went wrong.” I think Blizzard’s entire approach to the story has gone wrong, and BfA is a consequence.