https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685
Note the wording of the bug - they aren't just asking the app to adapt to a GNOME 3 change, they're asking it to do so by removing a feature that remains fully supported on other DEs. And if you read the comments, the justification is, "I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately".
It was that incident that made me conclude that GNOME is a destructive force in the Linux (and, broadly, Unix-like) ecosystem these days, at least if you don't like monocultures.
I think more than anything it's good old nostalgia. The applications menu is no more, instead it's a grid where you have to search for what you want or whatever. There's a massive screen overlay instead of a nice little dropdown.
Multiple desktops was a good feature that's come with Gnome 3, though.
If I recall, perhaps some indication of the intentions of Gnome 3 can be seen by the fact that you are prompted to drag up (really?! on a desktop?!) in order to unlock after you've entered screensaver or something. So there could be some of the same reasons why people initially disliked the Win 8 view.
But mostly, Gnome 2 was just so simple and familiar, though I don't know if that's my hindsight or whatever. Point and click to what you want to run, put things on your desktop, do whatever. No BS.
The application launcher for me is universally used by hitting super, typing what I want, and hitting enter. I never actually click on anything. Same with swiping up on the login screen, you can do that on a touch screen, but you can also just start typing your password.
I used Gnome 2 because it did what I wanted. Gnome 3 felt like style over substance (I'll agree wholeheartedly on "downright pretty UI"), and it couldn't be configured to act in a way I liked. I felt like I wasn't the kind of user they were targeting, so I switched to Mate when it came out.
Depending on who you ask, Gnome 3 was either a long-overdue redesign with great results or a dependable tool ditching its legacy to chase after some UX designer's dream.
It's been enough time. Might be time for me to look at it again. My patterns have shifted some, and it's possible that it would be a better fit for me now than it was then.