What's meant to be wrong with liking Garlemald, exactly...? There were many ways in which it could have been handled without leading to its destruction, especially when it's people have long suffered as a consequence of the Sundering leaving them with the inability to manipulate aether in many cases as well as repeated attempts to subject them to genocide.

The development team outright admitted that Garlemald was set to have an expansion of its own, which suggests that the original plan wasn't to simply do away with the place entirely. Furthermore, it wasn't lacking for fans - even with a vocal subset of the community bizarrely and creepily attacking anyone who dared to mention it in a positive manner.