So far I'm not really sure what to think of this change.
I definitely get your arguments and in general I'm also not a big fan.
However I think we need to wait and see how things play out for some time, because having way less accounts playing in wild also means more rewards (at least SPS) for the remaining players.
The change regarding the Rating inflation will take a few days as well. I also played a few seasons in wild some time ago and basically got to Diamond with mostly level 1 cards which did feel very weird to me. I then switched to modern and basically got the same rewards in Silver 3 as i did before in Diamond 2 (wild). I think something similar will happen in wild now. People will drop in Rating, but might actually receive a similar amount in rewards because of the smaller amount of players.
Have to see how it plays out, so far didnt notice more rewards per battle, GLINT rewards and multiplier rather going down.