[DonHopkins]

X11 was absolutely not the way to go since the day it was released on 15 September 1987, but that never stopped it.

[pjmlp]

The difference is that back then there were people actually developing it, the Wayland core team is basically the developers left in the GNU/Linux ecosystem that still care about GUIs, most of them former X contributors.

There isn't anyone left standing to care for X11 development, only vocal users.