How much should player feedback impact the design of World of Warcraft?

One of the critiques I’ve seen of Battle for Azeroth’s gameplay and systems is that the criticism offered of the Legendary items and Artifacts from Legion was overly influential, while there was little time for player feedback on systems like Azerite Armor or, more recently, Corruption and Corrupted gear. While it’s not a criticism I initially offered, I do think there’s a decent argument to be made that Blizzard often over-corrects — that they take the feedback from the previous expansion too close to heart in their iterative design while not giving themselves not enough time to really ascertain or implement feedback on the current systems.

This isn’t new or unique to recent design elements, either. As a long time Warrior player, Colossus Smash and Armor Penetration immediately come to mind as game design that I complained about forever and always felt like Blizzard didn’t get the problems with until they suddenly just plain got rid of them in-between expansions. But Azerite seems to be one of those systems that came so, so close to being amazing and that’s entirely why it makes me so angry — this could have been good, it could even have been great but for whatever reason the design didn’t quite make it. Can we blame that on feedback not being sought out enough? Or was it more just the natural risk of things not working out at any time?

What do you guys think? Should Blizzard be trying to apply their iterative design so that it’s more forward focused, so that the latest system gets more focus instead of designing in reaction to what came before? Or would that risk ultimately trying to design by committee and it’s better to focus on what they did in the past and what they don’t think worked out? How should player feedback be implemented in the design of the expansion?