I have enjoyed SoD alot and even phase 2 is fun, but the atmosphere has changed.
Phase 1 felt more like classic. Questing with random people. Most people were welcoming. Everyone was excited to see what it has to offer. BFD was easy but it was actually fun to do raiding at lvl 25. People just played the game for fun and probably for nostalgia. But after like 1 month, the playerbase dropped and those players didnt come back.
Phase 2 started very differently. Most people were prepared and had/have min-max mentality. The game itself could be okayish, but people arent that welcoming anymore. I think most people grinded to lvl 40, did all the new content, tried Gnomeregan and realized where we are going and quit.
In my opinion phase 2 isnt as successful as phase 1 for few reasons. Developers has too little time to make enough content, but 3 months in-game time is also just too long. They would need bigger team to satisfy all the needs we are craving and that probably isnt going to happen.
The future of SoD doesnt look good. If phase 3 is similar than phase 2, it will be depressing. Phase 4 will be competing against retail’s The War Within expansion and raiding in retail is just much better plus tons of new content.
These are my thoughts and SoD deserves a good place in my heart. Classic WoW 2019 didnt catch the classic feeling like SoD did. I think I can complete the circle and bury my classic feelings. Im glad SoD was able to enliven those feelings and I will probably play all phases still, but Im not gonna expect the SoD be the biggest thing in future 
People, lets just chill and have fun!
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try posting this on the US wow forums… you’ll be met with some harsh and mixed reviews. I can’t comment on phase 2 because I never reached the end of phase 1
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For me personally I’ve seen a lot of things I absolutely despise about SOD.
The incompetence of the dev team to balance the game in a timely manner, which seems to only apply for certain specs or classes.
The continuous lying or going back on stuff to try and hide their incompetence.
The amount of mechanics that have been abused throughout the game, which should have been easily identified and never made it to live.
Leaving classes such as Hunters and Priests untouched for the majority of P1 to dominate low level PvP (and still untouched to this day)
The overly harsh treatment of Balance Druid when you have classes that are actually worse still running around deleting people in seconds and in some cases doing double the damage of what starsurge ever was.
The toxic playerbase that witch hunts one class and then laughs about it on the forums or in game before moving on to the next class.
A Dev team that actually base their decisions on Reddit posts or forum rants.
The class favouritism by the Devs when it comes to stuff like STV PvP items. Pally weapon comes to mind, meanwhile you have specs getting epic lvl 40 items that have 2 more spell power than a lvl 33 blue item from SM GY.
Overall it’s probably been the worst wow experience I’ve had. It’s even worse than SOM which is hard to beat. I do think they had an opportunity to make something amazing, but sadly the team behind all the awful decisions have pretty much put the final nails in the coffin. SOD won’t even make it to 60 content before it’s totally barren and dead.
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Definitely have to agree with your perspective, and almost everything you said (except when you said “raiding in retail is better” since that’s a matter of opinion and not any objective fact, and thus your implied idea that people will trade SoD for retail over that factor may not actually apply).
I started p2 almost 2 hours after release, and I was astonished at the amount of groups specifically asking for mages only. The few that ended up in my groups either pulled half the dungeon, died and proceeded to blame the party and leave, or just leave as soon as they joined group and realized it was not a spellcleave group.
The most extreme example is a mage who joined for SM GY, halfway through he says he’s feeling useless (he was doing good damage), and when asked why that was he proceeded to explain he should be doing 1k dps with his build, and he left soon after that.
Never invited another mage to my groups, did the trick quite fine, I can say that all but 1 of the groups I ended up having were all chill, no pressure, and do things “as normal”, with talking even (which did not happen AT ALL on day 1. like, most of what people would say in /p would be"hello" and “gz” if someone dinged, and that was it).