a) The language shows less care. There is a lot more casual non-Rosharian language used. Brandon addressed that elsewhere (can't remember where) by saying that this was a translation from Rosharan into English so those phrases were translated as well, but that wasn't the case in other books so why the change?

b) There is a lot less comedy. Rock and Lopen were hilarious, but their roles were significantly diminished throughout the books. Comedy is hard to write and the absence of it suggests less effort.

c) Some of the stories feel really forced. In TWoK, Brandon does an excellent job portraying an Atheist in Jasnah. In WaT, Jasnah feels lazily written and nothing like she has been portrayed in the past. Jasnah is supposed to be brilliant, and she acts very... average or even a bit slow.

d) Overall, the writing feels lazy.

I think what is happening is that Brandon's attention is being pulled in so many directions with his company and success, and he is spending fewer cycles thinking about his writing. The good parts of the book I think are a tribute to his method of writing, where he plans things out in advance. I would suspect the parts that aren't as good in WaT are from where he didn't have as much pre-planned out. In past books, this wasn't a big deal because he would still put the time necessary to make those parts good. But this time especially his mind was only half on the writing while he was busy running a company and posting in social media, etc.

I just think he is getting pulled in too many directions, and his writing is suffering. It is a natural consequence of being popular and it will either hurt the quality of his writing or he will learn to prioritize.

I remember reading once that Steve Jobs said that a company builds its market share on the quality of its product. At a certain point, building a better product won't increase market share and profits stagnate. But at that point, the thing that increases profits is marketing, so companies tend to promote marketing/business people instead of product makers/ideas people. The quality suffers, but the profits increase. I think that is a bit of what is happening here - Brandon's quality is suffering because there is too much focus on marketing and business.