I don’t know if I can really weigh in since I didn’t play SL when it was current, instead coming back to it as a level 80 on ‘speedrun mode’, but it seems like SL’s story would have possibly landed better if it wasn’t all dumped on us out of nowhere starting with SL. If this stuff’s been going on for the entirety of WoW and even Warcraft as a whole, it seems weird to only introduce it and start fleshing it out for the first time once we’re actually going there. Blizz didn’t plant any seeds prior to SL, so we had no real attachment to any of it. And then SL ended and we’ve already completely moved on from all of it.
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Maybe you need to read some of the other replies lol. People didn’t like it for a lot of reasons.
I ended up quitting when they introduced the Shards of Domination system and people with legendaries in those slots were originally told ‘oops too bad better recraft’. The only reason they made recrafting easier, was the outpouring of negative feedback when dom sockets were first announced.
And even with recrafting we were being told “this system likely may only exist in Patch 9.1 so if you do craft a new Legendary, make sure to keep your old one in case it becomes useful in the future.” from guides like IV. It was frustrating.
Add to that, this was supposed to be the xpac with no borrowed power, and then it was borrowed power on top of borrowed power.
Visually, as always, Shadowlands was stunning. The initial storyline was decent (though it became convoluted). But at some point, personally, I was just sick of the bs and took a break.
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The jailer was a HORRIBLE antagonist. Hell he got outshined by the Tier 1 Raid boss. Danathrius was so much better.
It also did not help shadowland got phoned in half way through, post korthia they just shifted all dev to DF. SL got abandoned about half way through and skeleton crew was keeping it going.
The jailer though they tried to build up to be like arthus but they failed so badly because they forgot that in order for a bad guy to be interesting, he actually needed to do something. Jailer did nothing, he just showed up a few times and said some spooky lines and that was it.
SL IMO was the worst expansion they ever made simply due to the implications and impact it had on the greater wow story. SL ruined wow lore for me, so much so that any more i just dont really even recognize anything from SL as canon in my mind. Players/readers, should NEVER been able to go into the after life like we did, to be able to fully immerse yourself in it like we did. Doing so removed the mystery of death, which is one of the most important aspects of any story and setting. Because knowledge of it, is what creates great antagonists like arthus and kel thuzad, they were good characters because they saw past the veil and understood, but since now all of us do, it retroactively devalued their characters.
SL felt like it was going out of its way to purposefully break down and destroy previous lore and characters, not simply just ruin them by accident, it felt like it was setting out to ruin was was.
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that’s because you are playing it years after the fact when all of the things that were actually wrong with it outside of the lore retcons have been patched out for years.
I had the same experience that you have.
playing it now is not the same as playing it when it was current content.
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Shadowlands was awful
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That’s not a retcon because it was never established who the Dreadlords were and how they were created. There is a reference somewhere that they “appeared in the twisting neather”. Well, appeared from where?
Think for a minute about the book “The Hobbit”. In that story we meat Smeagle who found his “precious” in a river. His “precious” is a ring that has mysterious powers. Now was it a retcon when we learned in the Lord of the Rings that Smeagle’s “presious” was really the “One ring to rule them all”? No it wasn’t. It was added background material for the ring.
You may not like Zovaal the Jailer and that’s fine. It’s your opinion. But that doesn’t make it a retcon, just a further extension of the Dreadlord’s back story.
And yes, you had to do the full story on your main before Threads of Fate opened but what’s wrong with that? In every expansion we do the entire story first. That’s WoW 101. Why would you NOT do the entire story once?
And no you didn’t HAVE to do Torghast for the legendary. For the small percentage of players who do high level M+ and Mythic Raids that might have been true but you could easily play the entire expansion without the highest level gear.
And no it was 20 souls. It started with something like 5, then 10 but it topped out at 20.
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I am not stating that those are the only reasons. Jesus
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edit to remove my self quote I somehow did.
which just further exemplifies how absolutely horrible the writing was.
You literally said “The only reason” lmao. But okay. 
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The only thing I liked about the expac was the mogs. It otherwise felt pretty disconnected from WoW and from itself.
And the Jailer was lame.
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The mogs were cool, Zerith Mortis was cool and the introduction of the catalyst was cool
Shadowlands would have been perfectly fine as its own IP.
Retroactively making The Jailor central to basically every event both on Azeroth and beyond was farsical and framing Shadow Lands as the long awaited (and planned) conclusion to the storyline started in WC3 was insulting to the audience.
Then there was the whole circus around Sylvanas redemption and the handling of Arthas.
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the mogs are S-tier.
everyything else was…alright. from the perspective of someone playing it years after the fact.
Shadowlands covenant stories weere great. Many known faces making their return
MY ISSUE with shadowlands was the over the top, plot armor of sylvanas. She should have died second raid like guldan and a nice cinematic showing tyrande beheading her was sorely missed.
But what we got was so bad, the entire “she was not her own poor girl” was ultra lame. To this day shes not dead and she will come back to be the goodie good girl. So stupid. You delete sylvanas from the story and SL improves dramatically.
Oh and the first ones lore, aesthetic was peak wow. Actual new lore that is completely unkown to everyone, made the game feel big again (after the titan stuff was diminished overtime and completely destroyed now in tww).
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It had some good story elements and foundations to build from, but actually playing the game itself during the launch and first patch of that expansion was pretty bad. Then the story also kinda went in the can as it went on.
As much as some people will falsely attempt to argue otherwise, certain elements of the expansion also retconned prior characters’ motivations and impacts, and not in a good way.
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Happy you are enjoying it , like others have said much of what made it so bad when it was current was the time gating and the massive amounts of grinding required. Much of the gating was removed by the end of SL.
Also mal’ ganis and his GF were basically undercover as every villain you fought up to that point. Not really sure why they made that retcon.
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You better take that back
Them are fighting words round here
My opinion of SL has stayed the same since it was current:
The artwork is beautiful.
I love how wholly alien the Shadowlands feels.
The questing experience was great.
The side quests were great.
I enjoyed the story more than I disliked it.
And…
SL was the GRINDEST expansion ever!
You had to be there. All the grinding was unbelievable. THAT is why so many people burned out on SL, and hated it.
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a lot of people in this game don’t like stuff because they are jumping on a bandwagon and are told they’re not supposed to like stuff.
shadowlands was fine.
if I had to break all of the expansions down into a good or bad list shadowlands would be on the good list.
a lot of people had super strong feelings about mist of pandaria but in hindsight it was one of the best expansions that wow ever had