Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.
There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.