I played it yesterday all day & was quite enchanted by the old gameplay: the tediousness, the difficulty, the size of the world relative to your movement speed. Everything felt very nostalgic, sure, but it was also just damn fun mechanically. I only got to lvl 15 and that was with quite a lot of work. They really don't make 'em like they used to - BFA is a completely different game and it has been since Cataclysm. They took out so many RPG elements over the last ten years that really made it feel alive.
Also, the community seems grateful and welcoming at least on my server. I think people are actually happy to be challenged & forced to socialise to group instead of zoning in and out, sharding, seeing people cross-realm once and never again.
I don't know how much shelf life it will have but given they have about 80 running servers, the interest is clearly there.