I really couldn't disagree more. I don't think since TBC I've had a gathering toon, I've had 2x crafters since WotLK. I've always just bought my mats from the AH (even in WoD, I never bothered with the tedium of the mine or herb garden), didn't affect my experience as a crafter at all how the mats were available. In all cases I just bought them. The relevance of crafted gear, ease of levelling crafted professions, and usefulness of crafted items all has nothing at all to do with how the raw materials are obtained. Literally the only impact gathering has on crafting is the price to craft and profit gained from items you make. How good the crafting system is in any one expansion couldn't have less to do with how gathering works/is balanced for a huge amount of players.
Honestly, to each their own, but pretty much everything you said you liked about the old systems I hated, and all the things you didn't like about WoD I thought were great. I liked everything being tied to a daily mat, meant nothing would flood the AH but anyone who wanted to could work towards crafting anything, and you felt more invested in your crafts since you had to use your daily CD for X days, instead of just "buy mats from AH, make item" as it is otherwise. I MUCH preferred upgrade tokens and no new crafted recipes to endless new crafted pieces fully replacing the old ones never to be sold again, especially since further crafted pieces always required raid mats that I would never have access to since my raid team would use them for the guild. I think upgrade tokens stimulates the economy more since every crafter can make them and every player can potentially use them, instead of just raiders getting the recipes and the mats for the new stuff. Also, the forced "interplay" between professions in the past was some of the most tedious and worthless integration to me. Needing a blacksmith rod for enchanting, needing an alchemist to make you fuel as an engineer, it was just an artificial barrier to crafting and again you just bought some junk from the AH, and if your server didn't have any on the AH you couldn't make stuff. I think people who are most into crafting are least likely to be hardcore raiders or in huge guilds of people who can also craft lots of stuff, so the more self contained crafting is, the better it serves the actual audience that is heavily invested in it.
You make some good points. Not going to address everything (don't have time to be exhaustive) here and we'll still probably disagree, but mainly:
Everything being tied to a daily mat made crafting mindlessly dull and boring in WoD. There was no flavor, no role-playing subtext. Lack of interplay between professions is also a case of losing the role-playing aspect. Maybe you don't care about that, but it was important to me. Just crafting one thing as a base material isn't nearly as engaging as having to gather various exotic ingredients from different parts of the world. I mean sure, you can always buy stuff on the AH, but that's sort of besides the point (and the AH desperately needs a revamp, but that's a whole other conversation). I liked having to puzzle together various parts to make a whole, rather than "press one button, win game." But I suppose this all depends on how much you care about professions as a system - whether you consider it a core RPG mechanic, or just a side affair.
Other than that, we can only speculate on the types of people who are most into crafting. The sentiment I seem to get from "goblin" types is that the more modern stuff wasn't as well-received because of the lack of shuffles, difficult to manage markets like glyphs (glyph market, and inscription in general may as well not exist in Legion), etc. That's my interpretation, at least, though it's anecdotal evidence all the way down for either side I think.
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Either way, I'm not super happy with crafting in WoW right now (primarily the RNG nature of acquiring the 3rd star level in cases like alchemy) though it's not terrible, and I haven't been satisfied since maybe Mists. Even then though there were flaws for sure. I just think it can be improved, and maybe it doesn't have to be too burdensome --- it can be streamlined to an extent, but I would like flavor, role-playing in it, I guess is the point I'm trying to make.
Oh and the auction house, for the love of god, make the auction house better. Fucking ancient code/system that is, as bad as the backpack probably. I'd probably like to see something similar to the buy/sell orders in EVE, but that game also has the cool effect of arbitrage in that goods are physically located at different points (stations) in real space in the game -- there's money to be made "space trucking" stuff around to and from different market hubs.
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In other news, got a shitty 890 neck this week from the box that is useless (haste/mastery), already got a 900 one last week. Eye of Azshara 10 key
