The Shadowlands story in particular feels very frustrating. Like they’re trying to set up a ton of cliffhangers, but it doesn’t translate well. There’s an overarching sense of forced anticipation/climax, but we don’t get to see how it evolves or finishes til the end of the xpac. That’s fair, but the story so far feels like a jumbled mess of retcons, semi-retcons, mary sue-ism, and hints at what’s happening next without ever getting the satisfaction of “aha! so that’s what happens!” Even when there is a decent revelation to be made from an ingame cutscene and such. It’s confusing.
It feels like an ever-turning wheel of “and then…and then…and then…”
WOTLK felt amazing for the story- everyone knew the Lich King from the Warcraft RTS games, and he was a big baddie built up from a decade prior, but even those who never played the old games knew who he was and what he was about well before ICC released. The storytelling through the Wrathgate and the late heroics featuring the LK were amazing, and he was peppered in through the leveling zones.
Even Deathwing in Cataclysm was the first big bad guy expansion that didn’t have much prior lore, but that storytelling went along quite well with him torching the planet off the rip and so on. It was very straightforward with some nuance if you wanted to look for it.
Contrast those two examples with what happened story and cadence-wise in WoD and Shadowlands…