You drastically overestimate what a 5 year old can do
Is there any lore reason for pandaren, nightborn, vulpera or lightforge to exist before they were introduced ? You need to let blizzard bring their stories and races, classes as they wish to.
Legion had artefact weapons in which choice only existed in the beginning of the expansion. I'm not sure I see the parallel. What does it take away? When leveling you still gain abilities, instead of it being automatic, you spend a point for it. At max level, you can choose what to spec in.
The level squish was necessary as having too many levels removes value from what a level is and what the level progression brings.
Seeing the size and complexity of some of the talent trees, I feel that we're in a good spot for their first live iteration of the new class-spec talent trees. And classic talent trees are outdated mess that barely worked on me. I've never felt satisfied having most of my points being some small buff that I have to acquire 3 or 5 times before moving to the next row.
profession do not work fine, they are one of the lowest point of shadowlands mechanically. Alchemy, enchanting and cooking are functioning because they are based on well established needs that are kept from expansion to expansion. The legendary crafting was a really bad experiment that they didn't dare correct before 9.2.5. This new version of professions is supposed to kill two birds with one stone. Bring more depth to crafting, with gear progression for crafters. And help resolve the gear progression from raiding that is falling behind completely compared to mm+.
If anything was taught from Shadowlands is that you can have good gameplays without grinding. There is a space when raid loggers, dungeons crawlers and daily grinders can all have fun without a feeling of having to do it all (even if currently raid loggers feel a big need to go farm dungeons with the removed cap on valor).
So contrary to you, I'm feeling quite confident that dragonflight won't go back to being heavy on the grinding and farming.
I took the time to write all of this because it really feels like people pushed wrong or incomplete information to you, it's not doom and gloom at all right now. But don't force yourself to play a game if it's still not your cup of tea though