It basically insulted everyone’s intelligence by creating extreme mindless grinds, forcing PVPers into PVE and vice-versa. Everything felt like a chore and was extremely grindy. There were many external very grindy power systems, that made up like 30% the damage of your character. Those power systems were also timegated, meaning that if you came late to the expansion, you had to wait first around 4-10 weeks to have a chance to catch up. Later on catch up was introduced though. At the end of season 3 shadowlands was alright. Season 4 was just dead. However, in season 3 they released the hardest raid ever made, and many guilds just quit the game. The raid wasn’t hard in a fun way, it was just annoyingly bad, and people didn’t wanna learn it properly.
Blizzard:
The shadowlands are infinite
Alright, Blizzard figures - let’s make 5 zones and stop there. Smallest expansion in WoW history in terms of number of zones. Also let’s make 5 people, the leaders of these 5 zones, the key to all the Shadowlands, as if all the other infinite worlds have no influence on any of it.
And I’m just sitting there like… “that… made no sense.”
I also think that Shadowlands is disliked due to it being the chorepocalypse. A chore is a menial task which must be done with a certain regularity, and if it is not done you’ll fall behind. Its reward is not big, but the punishment is big if you let it pile up. In this way, the “reward” merely restores normalcy - like cleaning your room. You can’t catch up, you can’t undo past damage, thus ruining alts and generally causing a great deal of annoyance with just not being able to do whatever it is you want to.
Shadowlands was absolutely full of them. Every new system and every new patch came with a new set of chores. You had to do all these intricate weird things in order to maximize your reward for time, and none of it was fun or challenging.
Shadowlands zones are great, and i would like to see more, just without conduits and million seasonal currencies.
Blizzard’s art team is legendary in the full sense of the word. These guys never disappoint when it comes to zones. Except with Nasjatar, that place was truly evil. Point being that being pretty and having good gameplay are two different things.
SL was the first expansion I played from start to finish (although that doesn’t really say ‘SL good’ because there were times when RL stopped me playing during other XPs).
I didn’t mind a lot of the stuff that people complained about. I enjoyed the dungeons and the seasonal affixes, Nathria was a great raid, and I don’t really have any complaints about Sanctum or Sepulcher. I don’t mind character power being time gated. That’s the nature of MMOs. Content wise, Torghast was the thing that annoyed and frustrated me because it was time consuming ‘required’ content until the point where you overgeared it and could speed farm.
My main complaint about SL was being locked to covenants. I understand the idea behind it, and it would have been fine if the covenants had been balanced. As it was, players who liked to play multiple specs on the same class were often forced to choose one or the other because the covenant that was best for one could be exceptionally bad for another.
SL had an multitude off gameplay related issues that made the game worse imo
9.0 The maw
- conduit energy ( KEKL )
- weekly torghast chores ( if missed an week would be behind )
- weekly renown chores ( if missed an week would be behind could catchup later )
- daily maw rare, daily quest min maxing if intrested in sockets, 226 conduits from exalted
- 2 week lockout on covenant which where very balanced
- 7 month content drought
- refarming legandaries on alts
- refarming renown on alts
- forced to redo campain on alts no skips
- prideful
9.1 Korthia dissaster
- rng zone rewards, some days epic quality rep tokes others 5 rep same for daily quests
- grounded to the zone no flying
- still weekly hardcapped to torghast but now we have cinders
- shards of domination ( chaos bane LMAO )
- 6.5 month content drought
9.2 Sepulcher the no ptr testing raid
- most overtuned raid in recent history needed multiple nerfs to halondrus, anduin,rygelon,LOD,jailer that all had complex weakaura required
Slightly off topic here - why did you put a picture frame around your face?? 
Btw we all forgot to mention the extremely disgusting scandals happening in their offices, that made us naturally very resentful towards shadowlands at that time
Shadowlands was just fine and I miss it everyday I play DF.
because in Dragonflight you get free bugs with all new content. This char is wearing one of the new human heritage armour helms.
Don’t forget Method got world 2nd jailer kill because of a bug, though I expect they would have got the kill anyways.
Horrible story and characters (Sylvanas especially). Minor issue which also completely ruined the lore to shoehorn a crappy written villain with boring motivations.
Covenants were no choice at all, because it mixed cosmetics and vibe with… character power/abilities. So if you do pick the one you like but it’s not the best, even from a super casual perspective your character would feel underwhelming. And groups wouldn’t take you for endgame content that requires effort.
Why do you think they removed power from renown?
Shadowlands did a lot of damage to the game as it killed interest people had in the story (now a lot of people don’t even know what is going on with Dragonflight, me included, because we skip quests and cutscenes as the writing is still bad and cringe).
Not only that but it pushed people to see other games or even genres. Those most of the time won’t come back. They didn’t make Dragonflight less grindy out of the blue, they lost a lot of players for their crappy designs and decisions to always « fix » the game on the last patch, it’s exhausting and kills any trust from your customers.
I would hate an mmo to be Grindy 
I play FF, the mindset is totally different and overall sessions more enjoyable since you focus more on mechanics (no need for addons to tell us what’s going on) and playing better than just chasing gear that will be replaced in a few months.
When you tie grind with power, it just feels bad. With cosmetics I don’t mind because I can actually choose to chase a cosmetic or not.
Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have gear chasing, yet it’s filled with content and players (and I hate that game but for class balance reasons).
You don’t need the WoW formula because in the end it’s not really popular anymore. So long as people can enjoy a fun gameplay they will always come back. That’s how even old games are still around.
On top of what was mentioned in the thread I think an honorable mention should go to the reduced loot amounts from PvE content (only one loot for failing the timer in M+ for example).
The also changed that you now need to do Keystone Master on every character instead of it being account-wide, while also making it so that you need to do every dungeon on 15 on both fortified and tyrannical for it.
The covenant system, on top of being very alt unfriendly, was also a major kick in the balls for those who like playing multiple specs of their class. For some choosing one covenant was passable (paladin) between specs for others (shaman) the difference in performance between specs and covenants were just too big.
If you combine this with a similar route taken in previous expansion (BFA) left people, especially the raiding community, exhausted and burned out. Azerite gear, essences (before catchup), corruptions (before catchup) all made gearing alts to a point where you can start gearing was horrible.
Combination of lackluster patches, forced grind systems, and general jank that made it bad. Would probably have been okay without the covenant system
Are there because of Elune’s interferance. Usually she stops night elf souls from going to the Shadowlands (NOT doing that was her only act in relation to the Burning of Teldrassil - she never had the power to stop the Burining from happening in the first place, but she used the opportunity to send her “sister” souls - knowing NEs usually end up in Ardenweald), and instead allows them to stay on Azeroth.
Was explained during Shadowlands; Frostmourne is special, it brakes souls when wielded in anger, absorbing / cutting out pieces of souls (like what happened to Uther).
Is a lesser Eternal One with his own afterlife De Other Side (like Ardenweald, Revendreth, Bastion, Maldraxxus were), he created it for “his own ppl” the trolls and funnels their souls there whenever he’s got the chance.
Spirits are souls that didn’t transit over to the Shadowlands, they usually turn into wraiths after a while. Something bound their souls to the mortal plane (like in RL lore) and keeps them there. Spirits that are summoned by spells etc. are either actual souls temporarily called over from the Shadowlands, but Death’s magic prevents them from talking about the place… or the are simply echoes conjured from Spirit (the element), that rememberes the souls of the mortals it once touched.
That was well explained in the Oribos introduction questline: the 4 (5 with the Maw) realms we visited are the main relams with tasks overarching all the Shadowlands (ferrying souls, restoring nature spirits, protectign the realm against threats, redeeming sinful souls, plus the Maw with storing away “evil” souls that can’t be redeemed), there are infinite other realms / afterlives (as you can see when visiting the Arbiter, where there are “endless” other portals like those in the Ring of Transferance, leading potentially to other afterlives).
Like Bownswamdi with De Other Side (or the Drust “Goraks” for Thros), there are other “lesser” Eternal Ones for those realms, but the Winter Queen, Primus, Kyrestia and Sire Denathrius were the most powerful ones, because their realms are part of the administration of the Shadowlands.
I swear, most ppl complaining about SL lore never cared to actually engage themselves in it. I don’t want to say it’s perfect, but many of the things ppl complain about were explained or hinted at somewhere, just not plastered all over the place in red paint… and apparently many missed out on those hints, because it’s easier to hate.
All in all, I personally came to like SL a lot - yes, there were too many systems and too much grind (anima, offerings, legendaries, renown etc.), but the lore isn’t half as bad as most make it out to be.
SL was not that bad from a gameplay standpoint, it was from a content release timeline one. Blizz said they decided to do only 2 major patches but we can see with the sheer number of plot hole and unfinished stories that the expansion as been truncated. And the scandal around Blizzard happened at the worst moment. Most people left at the start of 9.1 for that or during the content drought between 9.1 and 9.2.
I understood well what you said because it’s basically what I said, but I still find it silly.
As for not wanting to engage with it - I mean engaging with it literally means accepting a hundred retcons and buying a ton of mediocre books. Nah, not interested.
it wasnt bad gameplay. the only bad with it was the so many grindy systems …conduits…legendary grind( BOP currency+ gold currency+ crafting esp on low poprealms)…then legendary powers …
in the last patch where everything was alt friendly, prices went down on legendari crafts, had tier sets with casual content grind in ZM, had the 3 purchasable items with the dinars IT WAS AWESOME