With version 3.0 of the extremely popular SEO plugin – yoast SEO, team yoast had done the biggest sin against users by letting them believe that the version 3.0 is just another upgrade of the software instead of calling it what it is essentially a totally new plugin.
When you read the comments at the wptavern article about the fiasco or at the plugin’s support forum you might get the impression that people are angry because of the amount of bugs and the time it took to sort them up, but while people are certainly upset about that, they are mainly upset about not getting a proper notification that the plugin have several major UX changes that impact their work flow. If they have known about that they would not have been automatically upgrading to the new version, not before giving a proper look into the changes and how they impact their workflow.
This happens too much with WordPress plugins, a development of a shiny new feature is forced on the users without ever asking them if they want it, and since the WordPress official position is that you should always upgrade users upgrade and find themselves with features they don’t want which sometimes even do damage.
Plugin developers should not introduce new features as upgrades, and if they do, they must be opt-in for people that already have the plugin and they just upgrade.