Lack of pve content

[Ronduwil]

The reason WoW is doing bad is not exclusively due to game design.

Not exclusively, but mostly. I can't speak for anyone else, but I prefer WoW's user interface, rich addon library, animation style, and transmog/glamour system. Why am I not playing WoW, then? Here's the short list

1. WoW completely decimated the casual gearing experience. The days of chain running heroic dungeons in a chill manner with friends and/or PUGs of varying skill levels are long gone. If I want to get pre-Mythic Raid BiS, I'm obligated to do go go go timed runs with the best of the best. In FFXIV, I can do Beast Tribe dailies, daily MSQ roulettes, daily Alliance Raids, and even daily leveling roulettes to make progress towards my BiS.
2. WoW did away with their gearing currency. They claimed they were giving it back, but instead they gave us currency used to upgrade existing gear that you could only get from doing the go go go dungeons I referenced earlier.
3. WoW literally incorporated an RIO-style rating system into their game to facilitate further elitism. Contrast that with YoshiP's statements on ACT (search for YoshiP on ACT on YouTube to see what I'm talking about) where he correctly acknowledges that incorporating it into the game would foster a toxic bully culture. It's nice to have an adult in charge of the game for a change.
4. FFXIV doesn't go overboard with the time gating. WoW does. I'm sorry, but it's no fun to begin playing through a long-awaited release only to discover that I'm limited to one hour of meaningful quest progression per week for no other reason than to keep me subbed longer.
5. FFXIV will never remove portals from the game or time gate flying. WoW does all of the above under the pretext that it makes the game feel "more dangerous" and "more alive." It's funny, but I see far more people in the open world in FFXIV despite the instant travel and the ungated flight. It's almost as if the fact that there are rewarding activities in the open world is more relevant than the existence of convenient travel options. SE gets it. Blizzard has demonstrated that it never will.
6. WoW's crafting system sucks. In BFA, you literally leveled your crafting up by raiding. In FFXIV, I level my crafting by crafting. In Shadowlands, you level your crafting up by cranking out literally hundreds of copies of the same legendary vessel. You're sinking millions of gold into this endeavor, and you will never see it again because the items you sell from crafting are dirt cheap by virtue of the fact that all crafters are cranking out hundreds of them to level their crafting. Worse, The lower ranks of the items are completely worthless by week three because all of hardcore farmers/botters have ranked up to max and flooded the market with cheap copies of the max rank product, making all the previous ranks completely worthless. In contrast, in FFXIV I can crank out low level items and still turn a hefty profit somehow. I love this game's crafting system. I only have two crafting professions maxed so far, but I'm eager to get them all to max so that I can start cranking out some BiS crafting gear along with some starter endgame gear for when I level all my jobs to max.

So I would argue that, yes, WoW is doing bad exclusively due to game design. WoW is better funded, has a better UI, and third party integration that leverages the immense talents of tons of very passionate open source developers. What it doesn't have is good game design. It's currently run by a bunch of elitist raiders whose contempt for casual content bleeds through to every decision they've made in the past 10 years.

All the other stuff that you're referring to only bolsters my opinion that I made the right call in leaving that game behind. My decision was made long before any of that stuff even came up.