Honestly Shadowlands is the best comparison for Dawntrail, Not BFA.

Shadowlands and Dawntrail were both expansions that had absolutely AWFUL content. The stories were trash, the content sucked, and they resulted in mass player loss on a scale never seen before.

I am not convinced anyone at Square Enix, CS3, or even Yoshi P himself are even aware of just how bad the situation is. They're not taking the communities feedback seriously, players are rapidly dropping off and amidst the largest player drop off in recent history Yoshi P continues to blunder his PR. I think the reality of the situation is, that Yoshi P and SE have convinced themselves that this player loss is normal and they're not going to fix anything or do anything differently in the future.