Personally, I was dissapointed with EW's story, it didn't pluck my heartstrings, wrench my gut, or jerk my tears. ꉂ (´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱª

Things I personally didn't like about EW's main plot (in no particular order of importance):
-The focus of the story was more on secondary and side characters then on the WoL, like they did with SB versus the more WoL-focused ShB and HW (to a lesser-extent).
-The stakes of the story were so high that there was no way we would fail, leading to a loss of tension for me. Status Quo is god, Status Quo is life (at least for the devs and story writers).
-While I liked seeing the Ancients, how they handled them, especially with Hermes and Venat, felt so forced and stupid.
-With all the areas we got this expansion not being connected or even close to each other, it felt very jumpy.
-Saradie mentioned Necron from IX coming from nowhere and that's how I view Meteion/the End Singer. Necron at least has the benefit of being thematically relevant to IX's core messages about mortality, The End Singer only themetically works for EW's story, not the whole of XIV's story we experienced up to this point.
-While I can appreciate that they tried to tackle so darker themes, I felt they handle them shallowly (and at times juvenilely) with platitudes and inspiring handwaves.
-The impressions they gave during fanfests and other presentation of the story was that we were bringing the war to the Garlean's doorstep. We did not...
-I hated the Scion sacrificing scenes in Ultima Thule. It's become a running joke that the Scions do these kind of sacrifices and get away scotch free. Removes all tension and sentimentality from the scene for me.
-Zenos. I never cared for Zenos as a enemy, let alone our (the WoL's) personal enemy. Having said that, the only time I felt any form of tension during EW's story was Zenos's body swapping episode only for that to lead to nothing.

I could post more but I'll leave it at this for now. (≖‿≖)