Pretty much my response in the "A Retrospective Look To WWE In 2014" thread seems pretty appropriate here:
"At any given year in any given promotion, there are always gonna be "I wish they'd have done this", "I wish this would have happened" or "I think they missed an opportunity" moments. It's just the facts of life and always will be as there's no means of satisfying everyone, hence there can be no perfect year.
For the first 8 or 9 months, I thought WWE was strong, I think things started to slow down about June or July but things were still going well. There were any number of great matches going in at any given time, guys like Daniel Bryan and The Shield were riding high, John Cena was still contributing to things even though he really wasn't the center of attention until Bryan had to vacate the title due to injury, The Authority were genuine heels that were easy to dislike, WWE had the strongest tag team division, overall, that it'd had in years, etc.
There were some bumps in the road in the beginning of the year, mostly involving WWE's booking of Daniel Bryan and Vince's seeming insistence on having Batista face Randy Orton at WrestleMania XXX for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Now some will say that the mishandling of Bryan was all by design while other say it was more of an example of Vince being out of touch, I'm more inclined to lean towards the former but there's ultimately no way of knowing. Either way, it resulted in fans being more invested in a title hunt than they have in quite some time.
The WWE Network has had some mixed results in terms of how many subscribers its had but, on the positive, I can't see anything to complain about when it comes to content or value. Even if all you have the network for is to watch the ppvs, it's still a helluva deal at only $10 a month. The WWE Network has also featured the emergence of NXT as a genuine alternative to more mainstream WWE programming of Raw & SmackDown!. NXT has been consistently strong throughout the year with its periodic live specials featuring some of the best wrestling matches to be seen in 2014. We also saw some unforgettable moments including the utter shock & awe of seeing the streak die, we saw Sting step into a WWE for the very first time in his career and, over the past couple of months, we SEEM to be seeing more prominence being put on the mid-card titles.
After SummerSlam, or possibly Night of Champions, things started to go downhill for WWE and go downhill in a hurry. We were entering the beginning of the fall television season, which always means much lower than usual numbers for Raw, but what was disheartening, to me at least, were so many programs and booking ideas coming about that just weren't all that interesting. Another problem that came about is that it seems Vince has taken a more hands on approach to WWE creative than he has in a while, especially in much of 2014.
This is just a guess on my part, I've no way of knowing it, but I'm basing it mostly in differences I see between booking in NXT and on the main roster. For the last several months, there's been a lot more "sports entertainment" filler or meaningless matches to serve as filler than we've seen on WWE TV in quite a while. We all know Vince enjoys sports entertainment while Triple H is, reportedly, more of a straight wrestling guy who believes that matches, compelling storylines and interesting characters should be the focal point. Vince ultimately makes the final decisions creatively and the return of the various "sports entertainment" stuff seems, at least to me, that he's more insistent on having them be more prominent than we've seen. We've also seen the tag team division pretty weakened the past several months, though still nowhere near as bad as it's been for much of the past decade or so.
We've also seen what, in my opinion, has been the mishandling of Bray Wyatt at various points, mostly during his feud against John Cena. Vince is highly resistant to doing anything that even suggests John Cena looking the slightest bit weak, so much to the point that it becomes a detriment. Whenever Cena does look weak, Vince has to...I dunno...restore fans' faith in Cena or something by having him eat guys alive, the most unfortunate victims of which were The Wyatt Family in 2014, especially after his loss to Brock Lesnar. Speaking of Lesnar, there's been no shortage of complaints lodged towards WWE for having a guy who wrestles 3 or 4 times a year be WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
However, while the past several months, as a whole, haven't been the stuff that dreams are made of, I still think that there's been a lot more good than bad. It hasn't been the best year, but it's definitely been a year where a whole lot has happened and there's been absolutely no shortage of interesting things to talk or debate about. Whether it be anything regarding CM Punk, The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, Daniel Bryan, John Cena, Bray Wyatt, The Shield, Sting, Dolph Ziggler, The Wyatt Family, NXT or whatever else, there's a little something for everyone to talk about good & bad.
If I had to rank the year as a whole on a scale from 1 to 10, I'd probably go with about a 7.5, though it could've been higher if the past 3 or 4 months as a whole hadn't been so lousy."