WOD seriously lacked things to do outside of raiding, but the raiding was great. And the classes played great. PVP was fun too. The zones were also beautiful, questing very engaging and enjoyable (also very fast)
BFA had decent raiding and stuff to do outside of raid, but it was mostly chores/upkeep like do your AP grind, do your visions grind, play corruptions roulette until they added in a ROTATING vendor, grind reps and honor for essences, play roulette for benthic gear. At least AoE wasn't capped so M+ was more fun than it is now. The class design was also terrible, with the removal of legendaries, artifact weapons and tier sets. Questing was ok (Alliance had a much better experience IMO)
Shadowlands has decent raiding but nothing to do outside of raid besides Mythic+ which is kinda meh because the dungeons aren't that great (subjectively) and AoE caps are lame. PVP is bland with shitty rewards, too much grinding for everything. Grind renown, grind soul ash, grind soul cinders, grind stygian embers, grind stygia, run torghast 2x each week. The classes are slightly better designed than BFA, but still garbage compared to WoD. Questing was terrible, hate the zones just being different realm, which makes it feel like there is no connection. Korthia is actually joke content too.
Most of Legion was pretty bad too. The grind was atrocious, legendary acquisition was terrible. Raids were OK, Nighthold being a standout fantastic raid and a culmination of the best zone and story experience every added to the game with Suramar. By 7.3.5, legion was fantastic, easily my second favourite experience in wow after 3.1 Ulduar patch.