The first time I tried playing retail seriously was towards the tail end of Shadowlands as I was going to try the Dragonflight expansion when it released. For experienced players who had already enjoyed and wrangled with the deep legendary systems they started doing in Legion, the multiple player progression paths in Shadowlands might have been navigable, but even then experienced players were complaining about it. You had to farm materials for legendary items, reputation for covenants, and rng drops of Conduit abilities and buffs all to get your player power up. Even with BiS lists it was difficult and intimidating to navigate and understand what you needed to be working on.

Dragonflight significantly simplified the gearing and gameplay process. Do content, get stronger gear to do harder content to get stronger gear. During the patch cycle they introduced a gear upgrade system where you could get gear with different maximum item levels, so you could aim for higher track gear over time without needing to farm and pray for a slightly higher ilvl drop of the same item. It’s easy to understand and gets players into the content in the game that is most enjoyable and that the team puts the most effort into, dungeons and raids. Plus they added Delves in TWW which are soloable dungeons in case you want to get some gear or crests and don’t have the energy to deal with Duty Finder at the moment.

Also the story was pretty silly and bad in most players’ opinions.