Well for me the story is what drew me into wow… when your narrative is “we are going to war to prevent a war”… when the protagonist, Saurfang’s main character trait is that ‘one must not forsake honour’, even in the face of death, no matter how fire the battle never forsake it… the whole ethos being it is better for orcs to die than live dishonourably… it all goes pear shaped when you buckle a character in on himself.
Then there was azerite, its fairly reasonable in 8.2 on wards but overall was a bit of a dumpster fire for haf the xpac.
You had sockets on benthic gear which messed up that system.
Essences which pretty much blacklisted alts until this very last patch where you can get rank 3s.
Honestly I think most people are missing the point here. I took a break for a month and a half. Coming back to mythic raiding it will take another month for me to catch up. Not a huge deal as there is a way. However I do have an issue with having to kill nzoth. My guild is focused on mythic which is great but having to pug normal or heroic is a huge waste of time. Being forced into one method to upgrade my cape is bad no matter how you look at it. They should at least let you get two upgrades from visions to catch up. Really demotivating in terms of returning.