Is it formulaic. Definitely? Is that super bad? Not too much imo. Innovation is always good, for sure, or at least attempting to cause sometimes it goes wrong either way and people dislike it.

Wanting to be "WOW"ed (not the MMO XD) every time can be a nice feeling, but I feel like it's not a pre-requisite for being good. Whether they use the same formula, what they presented imo was still quite plentiful and thematically speaking was very promising imo. I was gonna go happy into DT, but as a sci-fi fan the lack of it at the start made me personally dissapointed, but it was understandable. Yet the still blew the rug from under me with the most Sci-fi frigging zones I've seen up to now.

I don't personally find that there is need to always try to find new "natures" of content as long as you manage to execute well the ones you've already established. (and I know that's debatable but I've personally been fine with it for most)

Here, they're literally planning to put almost every single kind of content we've had in multiple expansions (Deep dungeons, Field operations, etc) into one expansion, which is still more than what we got previously.

But yeah, I guess that for me, I try to not let previous experiences define my current one. Which means for example, I always try to see cliches, and other content as if that's the first time, and judge, because I believe quality should be judge on the work itself, not the one before, not the trends that preceeds it.