Getting back into the game after a long time, getting used to scaling, it just isn’t really fun and it doesn’t really work.
You are the strongest the moment you create your character and you progressively get weaker every time you level up, enemies I killed at level 20 with ease are putting up way more of a fight at level 50 in Zuldazar for example, or how I accidentally did an Island expedition at level 25, which was too difficult but I made some progress, wanted to retry at level 60 but it was outright impossible now.
Then I unlocked a new race after doing the quests, started Shadowlands with a brand new character and the difficulty is trivial with everything dying in 1-2 shots, meanwhile I see a level 50 character in the same area, using all their abilities, healing themselves against the same enemy that my brand new character kills with ease.
Expansions relied on artifacts and azerite for power to my understanding, but there is no replacement, by the time you get HoA at level 50 it’s like ilvl 50… artifact weapons are also useless but it seemingly leaves a void where you don’t get other weapons as drops in those areas from what I experienced.
Places seem to have a cap on the ilvl of items you can get from quests and such, which doesn’t scale as much as the enemies do, and sometimes areas have really low caps of ilvl 50 for no obvious reason… I think I got normal drops in the broken isles and then low ones at the broken shore for some reason despite it being the next area.
It is disappointing that for most of the older expansions you’re literally playing for grey trash items that no longer serve a purpose and weapons and things that are irrelevant, even in their own expansions, and whilst I get they don’t want me to play older expansions, but you’d still need to get to level 60 or something first right?
But again the main issue is just the fact that enemies scale more than the ilvl does, at least that is my experience, but also a problem that many other MMOs solved by just giving out gear every 5 or 10 levels… like if you don’t ensure the world drops enough gear or quest rewards to scale the player along with the enemies it would make sense to give some gear at points that ensure the player has adequate gear to not have the experience get worse and worse over time.
Now maybe I’m wrong in these things, but this is my experience as a returning player at least.