I had a WP site for many years. One day the company who made the custom theme I was using decided to drop support for it. I figured it was time to just switch

I had a WP site for many years. One day the company who made the custom theme I was using decided to drop support for it. I figured it was time to just switch to the built-in theme for easy of maintenance purposes. I used the 2022 (or was it 2023) theme. The new editor was incredibly frustrating to use. I thought I must be doing something wrong but no, confirmed by reddit and youtube, it was a huge step backwards in many ways. One of the top downloaded plugins is the 'classic editor' which lets people use the old school editor. The craziest thing to me about the fall from grace is that the new editor was likely a response to increased competition from wix, squarespace, etc. Those sites editors can almost be used by grandma. Wordpress on the other hand requires a phd in wordpress now. Were any user studies conducted? According to google trends, Wordpress usage peaked a couple years ago and in my uninformed simpleton opinion would lay the blame at the feet of the redesign. I'm not bitter about the situation (although I did waste a lot of time fighting the new UI to get it to do what I want) but I am disheartened because wordpress has been a pillar for the internet for so long I want it to succeed.