For many, this paragraph is what hits home for players.
It just seemed to decimate the fantasy of death in WoW – Like death, the afterlife and the countless possibilities & miracles that could unfold with the once infinite universe of WoW … Shadowlands made that ocean of wonder into a shallow swimming pool of pollution.
Around the end-game of Shadowlands and sometime after many still couldn’t get over many features of lore which they use to love that were brought to ruin for them – Begging for it to be retconned as a feaver dream, alternate universe, limbo between life and the true afterlife (stating all who ‘died’ there were either reincarnated or passed to the true afterlife) — or some other method of undoing the damage that expansion had wrought on the previously rich storylines that was made into a sad shadow of its former glory.
For me, lately I struggle with trying to push on my belf shadowpriest since they essentially stated all belf Shadowpriests aren’t canon anymore – but the damage of SL makes it hard to push the RP to other avenues & express enjoyment on other characters.
Plus side:
Dragonflight has been quite promising and given other enjoyable avenues in the story I hadn’t considered, or they merely opened up new possibilities and made things rather exciting.
As for gameplay they got ways to go, but seem to be listening to the playerbase far better this expansion than they were in BFA & Shadowlands.