All this "Cata was a failure, Blizz lost huge sub numbers, best they can do is kill it as fast as possible" nonsense is driving me crazy.

With the exception of the 2 BC race starting zones and the DK starting zone, the vast, vast majority of all new content released in every WoW expansion pre-Cata focused around endgame, as did all the content patches as well. Blizzard is not stupid, they had to have known that releasing an expansion that was over 50% non-endgame content was going to result in a hit. Especially for players who pay by the minute, the majority of them are not going to spend their precious time flying around the new Barrens or leveling their 2nd mage for funzies.

As far as I'm concerned, Cata is no more or less flawed than Wrath or BC, it was just stuck with tidying up a 7 year old game instead of just being able to build upon it. I know plenty of people who used Cata as a chance to start playing/return, and they're loving it and wondering why everyone seems to think it's such a failure.

And yes, Blizzard lost subscribers and didn't manage to reach the same peak they did in Wrath. However, that still puts them many millions of subscribers above their competition, none of the 25 "WoW-killers" have successfully "killed WoW", and I think if subscribers had taken as serious a hit as people seem to be implying, it would be pretty obvious.
I don't doubt there are plenty of people who watch for subscription trends at Blizzard, I don't think its the quest design team, and I don't think an exceptionally large bump or decline means someone storms into the design team's office and demands they scrap everything because they just lost X subscribers.