HW didn’t have enough content. Nobody denies that, 3.1 is still the worst non legacy patch in the game despite the EW patches giving it a run for its money, gordias was hot garbage, diadem 1.0 and 2.0 were messy at best (280ilvl RNG weapons) downright annoying at worst (even for me who is probably field contents biggest fanboy)

however HW did have diadem, It had a unique trial story, it had the complex jobs people praise (even if the old system had clunk like CD’s not resetting) and gave birth to most of the content we associate with expansions now…….and it was also their first expansion after they clawed the game back to life with the highly flawed ARR, meanwhile EW is the 4th expansion and has regressed in content, I don’t think it’s rose coloured glasses to say HW was better than EW

Regardless that wasn’t really the point; the point was the zepla and mr happy had the same feedback as to what’s wrong with EW (even if Mr happy ultimately said HW was worse) but you seem to have interpreted that feedback quite differently based on how the streamer acted in the video

Also on the point of “even if every forum user was aligned with the EW bad narrative it’s still a tiny minority” that implies everyone not on the forums is content with the state of the game, this comes back to Val’s common attitude, the “my opinion is the default unless proven otherwise” which you are using here, the “if I don’t see someone actively disagreeing with me I’m gonna assume by default they agree with me”, just as you like to point out we don’t know if we are the majority you have no idea if you are the majority either, but we do know is that the vast majority of the streamers agree with us and that speaks a lot considering their cumulative knowledge and pull in the community