I mean, that logic kind of applies to a significant portion of existing Archaeology too.
As a NE digging up NE artifacts from 5000 years ago I may very well just be putting back together my own tea set. And lets not get started on the Draenei artifacts on Draenor - I don’t even know if they lived a single generation there.
I am pretty sure that by “reworking” that they mean it is pretty much forgotten about and they don’t care.
Blizzard: “Here’s Patch 9.1 where we introduce you to the ‘City of Secrets’ and a new reputation called ‘Archivists Codex’ earned by gathering relics from monsters and chests!”
Also Blizzard: “We have no plans to reintroduce Archaeology for Shadowlands or Dragonflight because Archeology doesn’t tie into the lore”
And the Korthia system where you would hunt down and recover the artifacts, and slowly fill up the treasure chamber, was very good.
Huge props for that because archaeology is boring as hell.
I mean rather than celebrating other people not getting things they enjoy you could just like, I don’t know, not do it.
Is there anybody who enjoys surveying? I’ve certainly never met anyone who does.
It’s not the greatest, I’ll give you that, but otherwise it’s fine IMO.
I was a big fan of FF7’s Bone Village dig site minigame and wouldn’t mind seeing that introduced.
What exactly do you enjoy about surveying? The poor interface? The misleading directions? The sheer tedium of it all that gates what might otherwise be interesting behind loads of garbage?
Different strokes for different folks.
I don’t have those issues. As cliche as this sounds, if someone’s having trouble with surveying, then “quite frankly, that’s a skill issue.”
I don’t find it uninteresting. It’s like fishing. It’s a calm, relaxing and easy-going thing with the chance to acquire some cool rare mounts or items.
I genuinely like archaeology too. I like ESO’s version of it, and I enjoy WoW’s version well enough too. It’s just a relaxing time sink. Doesn’t have to be absolutely riveting from start to finish. But nice easy lowkey ways to work towards a personal goal is, like … really what WoW needs a lot more of.
But nah they’ll just find more ways to make us grind harder instead of giving us reasons to kill time in their game for fun lol.
People like getting the rewards, but I don’t for a moment believe anyone actually enjoys surveying, they’re just ecstatically happy when it’s finally over. 
And I’m sure the numbers would show a ridiculously low participation in archaeology, which is why Blizzard dropped it and won’t be bringing it back.
Not… really? I mean, WoW’s a pretty old game but none of that stuff is old enough to be archaeological yet!
It belongs in a museum!
Anyway, while BoE cosmetics would be a neat reward for archaeology, the problem with archaeology isn’t rewards, it’s that the gameplay is awful and they don’t have anything lined up to replace it that wouldn’t make more sense as something else (like a Dragonscale Expedition daily).
Surveying is just the means to the end. Like flying around to find mining nodes or killing trash in a raid. You always have to do something to get the reward. Maybe it is the interface though because I’ve used addons that can eliminate all your complaints in a previous post. That is on Blizzard for repeatedly making poor interfaces in the game.
The biggest problem that I had with archaeology is the limited amount of dig sites. I couldn’t just try to get artifacts from one race originally. I had to go all over the continent hoping the digsite would appear. Later, you could trade your fragments but that is still more of a pain than surveying.
My issues with arch are the same as with pet battles, like I said. Neat idea. Great rewards. Horrible, horrible, horrible execution. Which is why the biggest proponents of both use addons. In the case of pet battles, people just bot it entirely, it’s so horrid.
Depending on your source, between 24-50% of players acquired the Legion archaeology mount.
https://www.dataforazeroth.com/collections/mounts/779/spirit-of-echero
I wouldn’t call that ridiculously low at all.
Sure it did. Archeology isn’t just studying something old and gone. We could’ve found more anima, we did quests for things that spriggans stole that we could’ve unearthed or fragments of broken buoldings, sigils, etc to learn more about the cultures of each place. There’s an entire area of Bastion to learn more about the war with the Void.
That was a quest chain. Not standard archaeology.
Which is my whole point - it’s a fine idea, they just need to get away from the surveying mechanic, because it’s awful.
How many people have the ultramarine battle tank? That’s real archaeology in its true form.
That’s also an absurdly rare item. Even so, that’s between 5% and 13%.
We have achievements for collecting 100 unique common artifacts that has a 21-39% acquisition rate depending on source.
Archaeology isn’t that bad, but I’ll agree with you the survey mechanic could be a little more engaging, although my opinion is that it’s fine if it’s left the way it is.
I always found archeology, as it is in game, to be the single most boring activity to do, and this is coming from someone who has 4 characters with maxed out fishing… 
If they could make the actual process of doing archaeology more fun, it would definitely help.
I regret not thinking up archeology stuff to add to Shadowlands when I imagined it. I kind of left it to Blizzard and they didn’t add anything themselves and now they’re not adding it to Dragonflight either. I know there are people who like it so that’s kind of disappointing.