I've never been to blizzcon so I can't comment there. I didn't start playing until the very end of BFA so I didn't play it much but I heard it was also a shit expansion. Personally I couldn't care less about the story in an MMO (I'm playing for m+ and raids) but both expansions since have a much better story than Shadowlands did.

It's still not a perfect game but there's been a LOT of QoL changes this expansion especially. Reputation is account-wide, campaign quests can be largely skipped on alts, and there's a shared bank. Almost everything is cross-faction and cross-server now, too. There's a lot more ways to gear up now, no rep grinds, and the only real time gating is at the beginning of each patch.

Anyway, don't mean to sound like a shill here. I swore off WoW after a few months of Shadowlands but got talked into coming back and don't regret it. Blizzard addressed most of my problems with the game so I'm happy to say it's a good game now