Meta-commentary: I think my problem with shadowlands is embodied by the fact that you have to have "positivity threads" for it.
All of the positives are used as the selling point of WoW expansions anymore, and are dripfed and completely overshadowed by the countless negatives while simultaneously obscuring them.
It appears to me that all of these positives have a pattern across all recent expansions: suffer through the vanilla version of the game to get a dose of the aesthetic and "cool new features" while eventually, over many patches, something completely different is in place at the end that is relatively way better than the beginning. So threads like this emphasize the retcon and serve as a socially spread PR tactic of "all the good things, no bad things allowed" of which many people missed when abandoning the game.
All of this covers up glaringly intentional design to draw out subs and build the illusion that lessons learned in the expansion ramp-up will apply to the next expansion.
This became really clear to me when I devoured the vanilla shadowlands experience only to be met with time gates, zero progression and weird design choices that were eventually removed. Easy way to get prolonged interaction by offering the things that should have been in place the first months, way later...
Otherwise, yeah, the positives were all the surface things as mentioned in this thread: great themes, great potential with story/conflict, great nostalgic callbacks with interesting new ideas... but at the end of the day the core issues I have with the system of the game itself were just hidden by the idea that It's Different Now!
Of course they deserve a round of applause for how beautiful the illusion is, but it seems a bit odd to discuss how amazing the siren's song is and omit the jagged rocks they lure you towards.
examples
I loved the ability to theme your class by the groups in the shadowlands. (illusion)
I fully expected the issues with balance and how suboptimal choice of factions could be per class, but dang those rifts were massive (rocks)
I loved the concept and art direction of those themes (illusion)
I didn't at all like how the progression worked within the themes (rocks)
This expansion was one of the few that I wasn't absolutely bored to tears by the dailies and the potential they had for expanding them, why wouldn't they? they're so great (illusion)
after the veneer wore off, it revealed a grind more punishing, until tweaks, and less rewarding (rocks)
I'd say, in this case, the quality and positives of it are what drove so many people to be so emotionally negative about it. Is it a positive to say "it had such amazing potential?"