Short and straight-to-the-point
I 100% agree. It seemed like the general playerbase morale was never lower than during SL, I remember a good number of players outright swapping to other games like FF only like 7-8 months in 
… that’s unprecedented I think
Typically an expansion has enough “gas in the tank” to provide at least a solid year of content (roughly), but with Shadowlands it really felt like the content “dried up” by summer 2021, the content drought was noticeable fairly quick
You don’t have statistics to support this. Nobody outside of Blizzard does.
Wanna know what expansion does have the statistics to support “coming close to killing the game?” That’s right: WoD.
For Shadowlands: Remix, the Bronze Dragonflight goes back in time and tries to make the story better 
I’m surprised they did Cata classic, wasn’t that the first expansion to make entire guilds and like half the playerbase quit?
They gonna lose their whole flight doing that. Better call in ysera, she gonna have to tank this one as well.
I understand WoD and Shadowlands given that both of them had significant cut content to them, but why Cata? Outside of it altering the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor to allow seamless flying across the maps (save for some specific examples in the Eastern Kingdom, that will possibly be changed with the Midnight Expansion, actually.)
WoD had a passable story and setting/questing, it suffered by having nothing to do except fill-the-bar apexis dailies.
SL had those things suck in varying degrees from bad to worse, and a bunch of hostile design in all the expansion systems.
A memory void like WoD could be fixed by adding delves/M+ so it isn’t boring. SL has existing memories to fight off before players even begin to give it a chance.
“Remember that time I tied a hornet’s nest to your dog and field-kicked it into your bedroom window in the middle of the night? Ok, that was bad, but you trust me to do it better the second time, right?”
Stop it. Stop it.
Yes, Cata classic was very weird. I suspect they got to a point where it’s a matter of simply flipping a switch on these old expansions as opposed to Classic and TBC classic where they had to rebuild the game in many ways from ground up.
I suspect with the late explanations, Cata onward, they have a modern and usable version of the game to go live at any moment. Hence MOP remix, Cata Classic, WoD Boogaloo, etc which we will all get no doubt.
Meh, best to leave that one alone TBH, curious if they’ll stop classic at legion, given BFA forward were not considered very favorable expansions.
The worst expansion was WOTLK or Cata.
We already got one. It’s called DragonFlight but with Unicorns and Rainbow theme. A redemption. No more Meaningful Choice becoz if players given a choice, they would select ALL OF THE ABOVE.
WOD and SL were both terrible. But they were terrible in different ways. WOD didn’t desecrate the lore, and it had a lot of potential…it was just incomplete and half baked. What was there was good, but it was at best 1/3 of an expansion (sold at more than full price).
SL wasn’t as “incomplete” as WOD, but it took a huge diarrhea dump all over the Warcraft universe, and absolutely desecrated the lore. Also, the gameplay was grindy beyond anything that’s ever been in the game before. And it wasn’t even a fun grind, it was just a meaningless grind. Playing SL was like going to work and not getting paid for it.
Well, again, I disagree. And, again, that’s why restaurants offer different dishes… because people don’t all like the same things.
WoD’s problem was that there was no real content, it was just a bit boring because there wasn’t much to do. The story was cut and a little bit weird, but good enough for at least a solid questing experience. And then there was the big content drought at the end.
SL not only had two content droughts in the middle of the expansions, but the content was so badly, unfriendly and time-consumingly designed that players felt like Blizzard tried to piss players off on purpose. Everything they did in this expansion was a huge fumble. They even had the nerve to tell us they wouldn’t change anything, didn’t matter to them how many people were upset about their absurd decisions. And on top of that the story was a huge clown fiesta, full of memes with players constantly thinking “What the heck is happening…?”.
For me personally WoD was like “meh, that’s not very fun but at least there’s some stuff here and there I can still do. Hope they will do better soon”. SL was like “I can’t deal with this, this is ridiculous. Time for other games”.
If Warcraft was a pizza place, Shadowlands was an expired salad that they put on the menu after taking a dump on half the pizza options.
And who goes to a pizza place just for the salad?
Hmmm, I dunno more like they dumped the salad on the pizza? To clarify, the EXPIRED salad is now on the pizza…
That’s actually a much better way to put it, yeah.
Took a perfectly good pizza, scooped off half the cheese and toppings, then dumped a rancid salad on top.
Give the devs another expansion or two to figure out expansions without grind and borrowed power, THEN see if they could redo SL, minus the rancid salad.