same, I stopped watching One Piece around the Punk Hazard arc, realized shit was getting milked beyond necessity and the pacing was too slow, which grew my affinity to shorter shows and have only been gravitated towards the short ones from then on. Same happened with Naruto during Shipuuden. Hunter X Hunter was probably the last anime I watched that has more than a hundred episodes and even that is on a hiatus now. Other that that yeah, my preferred anime have largely been the shorter ones (10-50 episodes).
Yeah, it took YEARS for the second season to come. Even I only got back into the show like last year or something. There’s a reason why another studio is doing the final season, the previous studio just couldn’t do it in the shorter span of deadline the final season has gotten, it’s unfortunate but at least the writer is fully on board with the anime’s making, and it’s not a FMA or Game of Thrones type situation.
However, I don’t expect AoT to end this year. As I said, they might split it into parts and take a mid season break and release the second half next year. But we’ll see, we’re close to the 12 episode mark now. We’ll get to know soon.