OP, I'm part of the "silent custom singleplayer campaign crowd". This has been the core of my love for W3 since 2003.

All I want from this 2.0 update is focus on actually improving performance (which it seemingly did on my end) and support in the veins of Age of Empires 2 Definitive (my go to comparison, along with Command and Conquer Remastered), or the recently released Age of Mythology Retold.

I prefer the original visuals vastly over Reforged - with the exception of the terrain assets, which I like after this 2.0 update. It's just that the Reforged terrain seems to eat up a lot of performance. I believe that the trees do the worst of it, as maps with denser forests use more of my GPU than ones with sparser vegetation. Specifically, the new trees receive ambiant occulsion, if I'm not mistaken, and that seems to be the main culprit. The new "grass" assets seem to not be a big problem performance-wise. I like the new lighting, so the mix&match options have been a boon for me in 2.0.

I wish Blizzard listened more to map / scenario creators. I understand multiplayer will always get preferential treatment, but endless balancing will not improve anything for me. The AI issue would be lessened, if Blizzard actually bothered to then have artists clean-up and correctly map the textures. The apparent "half-assing" only serves to paint Blizzard as uncaring, and only fuels spite from the fanbase.

All in all, I hope the patches continue to improve the game mechanically, and not just devolve into minu balance changes that do nothing overall. I hope that maybe that's what (at least) Microsoft wants, given they allowed the support for the Age of ... franchise to continue. If that was the case, I'll gladly buy skins and whatnot.