That’s neither an accurate, holistic, nor sustainable way to evaluate the health of a business or service.
I agree that a lot of posts in this thread are essentially just opinions, but you should acknowledge that the power of the customer’s opinion matters more than you say it does.
How did it fail?
It made a lot of money during a pandemic where workflows were constantly changing.
If anything is was a big success.
A company has to make money to survive. If they don’t they will go out of business. That’s business 101.
And yes of course the customer’s opinion matters. You are one customer and if you said you didn’t like the product then fine. But if you make a blanket statement that Shadowlands failed and that it was a bad release then you should be back that up with something other than your opinion.
I know people have their issues with BFA, but without a doubt Drustvar is the best zone in this entire game. That zone never gets old
The simple fact you believe “failure” can only be measured in dollars and a P/L statement just about nearly invalidates your rose colored glasses contrarian viewpoint.
SL sucked now prove to me it didn’t.
See? Two can play that useless silly game.
Nothing anyone types and there has been plenty of long essays on the failures in SL will help you see the light. That is however the point you are just white knighting not interested in a back and forth debate.
Here’s some enlightenment for you chief, not everything success / fail is based on money. EVEN in the corporate world.
The simple example of how DF is such a breath of fresh air, no borrowed power systems, no ridiculous time gating etc, shows proof that blizzard even realized SL sucked.
Further, new players dont even level there instead they goto BfA, more proof Blizzard wants to sweep this disaster under the rug. Nothing to see here.
But sure keep white knighting with your only premise being money based and show how you lack common sense and any sense of deeper thought processing that doesnt revolve around $$$.
Ignorant at best.
Imagine you’re a teenager, and every day you get out of school you have to do your homework, then cut the grass, then wash the dishes, then cut your grannies toenails. After you get done taking care of granny, you can wash the laundry, put it away and then have fun in WoW for a hour before bed. This was shadowlands 
I had a blast with SL, just played with one friend the entire xpac and had so much fun, if you are not enjoying it then why keep playing ? this is the dumbest thing ever, waaaaaah waaaaaah “the game is bad” then stop playing btch wtf
Yikes. Bummer.
Maybe you should have tried just playing the game?
I agree it should be backed up with more than opinion when saying the entire expansion overall was a failure. Some point to the sharp decline in subs following the first patch and frustrating gameplay issues that weren’t resolved until a much later patch (I was taking a break then, so I can’t speak on early SL gameplay complaints).
Joining late, I agree (opinion) that the zones lacked creativity and the story made little to no sense.
Games, shows, music, and other entertainment content depends heavily on customer satisfaction. Look at Rings of Power - everyone criticizes the writing. There isn’t a clear objective metric to measure that, but its widely understood to be one of the show’s weak points. That’s entirely opinion-based but it should still be taken very seriously by the creators.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated a fictional character as much as I hate Sylvanas.
By playing the game, I assume you mean the list of chores you have to do, before doing anything fun? 
Or, y’know, don’t do chores, and just do keys?
I assume you started playing SL like the last 3 months? Because before that, unless you wanted your character to be gimped, you had to farm your covenant, farm Torghast, farm your legendary skills, farm your soul binds. Then get gear. Your either clueless or a troll, I don’t have any more time to dedicate to either.
Curious to know why u say m+?
Lol.
Systems on top of systems on top of systems…
Remember General Motors, a company that at one time was the biggest company in the world? What happened to it? Well, people stopped buying their cars and they went through a period where they were losing more money than they were earning. The result, they had to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganize. The investors lost every penny they were holding in GM stock.
Do you really believe you can run a successful company that loses more money than it earns? Well you can for a while, just take a look at Uber but if you look at the long term eventually companies have to become profitable or they go out of business.
On the flip side, if a company makes a profit the don’t go out of business. Ask any CEO or CFO of any corporation if it’s important for your company to make a profit and what do you think they will say?
As for proving your negative, imagine if they used your system in court. Now imagine that you were arrested for a crime you didn’t commit and the judge said “You have to prove your innocent or you go to jail”. Think that would be a good system?
As for the long essays on failure, forums always attract people who want to complain about something. Still what we see here is a small fraction of the player base. You can write an essay as long as you like but if it’s all speculation and opinion it doesn’t prove anything.
The zones were so uninspired and boring, I literally hate having to do Shadowlands content because of the zones being so bad to me.
The hub city is terrible to me, in the way it looks and how the flight paths are. You legitimately couldn’t fly yourself from Oribos to the other zones, so you have to use the flight path. That is honestly one of the things I abhor the most about Shadowlands.
I hated the covenant system, the abilities were not balanced, so for certain classes you would be better off joining a specific covenant. I mained a zandalari druid back then and I wanted to join the Necrolords, but I literally had to join the Night Fae for Convoke, or I was not optimal.
The maw was awful, everything in the maw was awful. Torghast was terrible.
Honestly most of what made Shadowlands bad to me, is the travel system, and just how boring it was. I literally cannot stand being in shadowlands zones for too long. I prefer being in literally any other zone rather than shadowlands.
Shadowlands was honestly so terrible to me, I unsubbed for a long time from wow because of SL.
For me it was mainly the story. It was a complete disaster.
They ruined Sylvanas, the jailer probably worst villain in warcraft. Retcons were incredible lame and unnecesary.
Zones were pretty but the story just ruined the whole thing of it. I’ll always hate they ruined death fantasy in wow now that everyone knows they’ll eventually go to the shadowlands.
The maw is probably the only zone in the whole WoW world that I hate to be in it. Like I can’t stand being in the maw.
On top of that Systems were awfully time gated and they were obnoxious to get. Shards of domination worst system ever added.
Also there were too many systems Conduits/Soulbinds/Legendaries/Shards
Torgahst was too repetitive and boring with no difficulty at all.
For me, I think the entire story was a no-sell because of the cartoony, Disney-ish way they decided to package it. If you had told me there was going to be a Wow expansion where the leadership of the horde and alliance are kidnapped by the warden of hell, I would have been totally onboard. Like “Hey, they Diablo in Warcraft! So cool!” But then you get to the shadowlands and your allies are forest pixies and Dracula-style vampires, and it all gets so convoluted so quickly.
And then what? You get to the maw and torghast and what do we see? These prisoners being tortured are glowing wisps, and it totally fails to sell the urgency of it all. WOTLK worked because you saw how depraved it was that Arthas used plagues to forcibly convert human peasants into shambling horrors. In torghast we see little silhouette guys in canary cages and are supposed to be moved by it.
And don’t even get me started on Sylvanas.