Lemme just start this by getting Shadowlands out of the way first. SL took the narrative and ran with it in a bad direction for all of its duration, with growing stakes that had no build-up and the bombardment of new concepts every patch that both lacked a connection to anything established prior and at the same time managed to add little to it - honestly, it might have removed more than it added. The way the four covenants were presented made this apparently infinite afterlife seem small, as everything seemed to revolve around them. It introduced a lot more questions than it answered (many of which really didn’t need asking to begin with imo) through touching on things like how the souls are picked up, then sorted, and then thrown into one of these four realms, but only ever on a surface level. Korthia added little to nothing with a “city of secrets” that held no secrets, that continued to escalate the situation but without ever presenting the Jailer as a threat - he’s never met beyond the final act of the raid. Zereth Mortis was the culmination of this, completely detaching players who were already detached from all of Shadowlands’ concept by introducing this realm that now makes afterlives without also ever going into detail on any particular inner workings. It’s a mile long climb of increasing stakes, but incredibly shallow in how deep they could be explored, to say nothing of the fact that there was really nothing to connect back to what players were familiar with.
But Shadowlands is over, and we’re in the Dragon Isles now. The narrative isn’t as bleak, and instead of being surrounded by weird blue angel people, owls, vampires or skeletons, we’re escorted by familiar races in the Dragonscale Expedition. It’s already a far better start, but one that still plays out in a very strange way. Prepatch (however canon that may even be) had primalists attacking locations in the world, seemingly at random (unless the Barrens had some reason I missed), and they’re aiming to, much like others, turn the world inside out through elemental power.
Except that… They only ever act on the isles, we don’t know where they came from or why most of the primalists JOINED the primalists at all, and for all the threat they apparently pose to the whole world, the most the world could spare to help was a handful of explorers with archaeology tools. Not even a hint of support from the factions that were well established even for new players in Battle for Azeroth. There is an armistice going on, so the factions are cooperating to some degree – and that’s good, but it’s not shown in any degree. The expedition is instead this gray blob that is really neither.
And there’s a great dissonance here, where Raszageth (and now the remaining incarnates) are creatures that the dragons fear immensely, but take no further help to defeat. Fyrakk is out there burning places with shadowflame, roaming freely, but even Loamm is business as usual after he sets it to the torch. So which one is it, are they dangerous or just the average Tuesday? Is it that this story is meant to play out as if we are Dracthyr, given it was their story that set this off?
Those things might still be explored in a later update, of course, but I’ll try to tie it more or less to my main point, that I started with SL. Much like how SL was about the problems of the dead, and how little that tied back to what players were familiar with, DF is about the problems of dragons. This isn’t to say exploring either at length is necessarily bad, being able to explore more about the culture is great – but after a four year streak of nothing but that (and Shadowlands), small questlines like Baine and the centaur, the heritage questlines, and other small bits of the sort feel extremely welcome. Players are, after all, playing humans, orcs, tauren, etc, not dragons (though dracthyr have had an excellent treatment in expanding their lore well after release), so when everything current relates to “only the realms of death” and now “only the dragons”, the world once again feels very small. Especially when BFA left so much up in the air about recovery, reconnecting after the war.
I think it’s no wonder so many are hopeful for a world revamp, as it would bring them back to the roots of what made them enjoy the world itself. Even the Exploring series of books only describe what is already seen ingame, and what’s seen ingame is intrinsically tied to Cataclysm still, nearly a decade ago.