A lot of buzzwords with most of them being wrong. There were multiple strats for islands, for once, you could do tripple dps (classic), pvp version, ATOMIK giga blast, kite and kill, pacifist rabbit charm and probably couple more. Just because you played it with only one doesn't mean other strats didn't exist. Second rewards were ok, and it was finally something different that typical dungeons and raids that was pretty fun (because of AOE component, and change of pace).
What islands really needed was just more fun items, more maps and more enemy variety.
Well the thing is, you don't seem to understand one thing, no feature is going to be fun for everyone. What is important is to not listen to some angry streamers (or dudes on the forum) and keep iterating and not abandoning it after 1 expansion. That is all this game needs. Not swinging their design decisions every expansion and abandoning their ideas so fast.
First iteration of M+ was total disaster, fortunately they kept on improving it until they went too far the other side in SL where every mob is just damn annoying.