I think have to put it in perspective.
BfA is barely on it’s first patch, 8.1. The current content has received almost daily hotfixes and patches. In other words, don’t think you can rate it compared to fully developed expansion.
That said, here comes the Thunder: BfA launch, 8.0 was absolute, complete and utter smelly TRASH. It has even caused a loyalist like me to cancel my six month subs, that have more or less ran the past decade, to month-to-months, from ingame tokens. In other words, I am cashing out my chips, and leaving the table.
Its like they take from Legion, what no one liked (artifact power farm), and double down on it.
And what people did like, and pretty much destroyed it. In 8.1 they have slowly moved in a better direction, but right now blizzard wants to see how far they can push customer satisfaction, or should I say dissatisfaction.
I won’t go into details, food for another day. But will echo what was mentioned above, the community is aging, and rather then age with it, they are trying to “shoot the moon” and bring all the “instant gratification” youths into the fold with instant gear, minigames, “fast” content, etc.
Personally, by now, after 14 years I only really care about m+ and pvp content. Everything else is a burden to enjoy those activities. I won’t go into much more detail, to try to remain terse (fail), but the intertwining of the game to some fabricated story really annoys me. I NEVER liked that, and it only seems to be getting worse.
In sum, I think the metacritic rating is far to favorable. So far, I would say it’s about a 1.1. But, as mentioned above, to early to judge compared to the others.