The shards definitely became tedious fast.
Personally I hate the Exalted plains making you burn 7456 corpse pits with those damn undead crawling out of everywhere. I was so excited about repairing the bridge but there were just more boring undead on the other side 
Also looking for the nonexistent wardens all across the Storm coast was pretty pointless imo.
I'm surprised to see so much hate for Druffy and the Halla
I thought those two quests were cute and easily done and not near as annoying as some of the other sidequests. I barely remembered Druffy from the game until I saw all the hate he's getting 
I definitely missed more interaction with sidequest NPCs. Most of the time you're just finding people's corpses, letters, notes and journals
would have been nice to actually find the writer alive at the end of the quest for once.