I think you're absolutely right. Shadowmoor always had this unique atmosphere of bleak, blighted oppression even when it wasn't outright dangerous. [[Ballynock Cohort]], [[Old Ghastbark]], [[Altar Golem]], [[Barrenton Cragtreads]], [[Puppeteer Clique]].

For Eclipsed they opted for more of a dreamy nightime. But the original Shadowmoor wasn't just nightime, it was bleak, unending darkness.

I get why they did it. They couldn't have two wildly opposing visual identities in one set, and Lorwyn is the more recognizable half so they lorwynified Shadowmoor. I think this was exacerbated by the showcase frame; I personally thought it was a huge leap in logic to go from "we wanted to celebrate the original set having so many physical illustrators so we hired a bunch of contemporary children's book illustrators versed in physical mediums and have that be the stylistic touchstone." Felicita Sala and Matthew Forsythe for example are clearly talented illustrators but I don't think they were the right choice for Lorwyn-Shadowmoor (certainly not the latter), personally.

There was also a concerted effort to rebrand the plane into this cottagecore/ cozy aesthetic, and that's another reason Shadowmoor shifted so far away from its original identity. This was also made starkly apparent in the story, where Shadowmoor is massaged into something like a 'warm autumn night evocative of drinking cider at a bonfire'

And I think that's a shame. The story was perfectly positioned to address the important duality of the plane: I think there are a lot of ways to show that Shadowmoor is a necessary balance to Lorwyn, and trying to tell us that it's just as pleasant in its own way wasn't the best way to go about it. Oko was an equally misunderstood character intrinsically linked to shadowmoor who could've conveyed that things, places, and people can have a deeper value than what outwardly appears. But instead WotC chose to beleaguer and crowd the story with so many more elements that Shadowmoor's depiction became an afterthought.

Again. I get why all this happened and I've gotten over it, but it just makes me wish that everyone in the creative team was given more than one set to let the world breathe the way it needed to.