The system itself was rather disliked considering how it got castrated in WotR
Yeah, well, people who disliked it are incompetent fools and they can take a hike for all I care.
It's pretty much the best compromise between depth and flexibility I've seen in the genre... And I've been playing the genre since the Ultima V days in the late '80s.
I'm also absolutely not a big fan of how they botched it in WOTR for a more abstract, obtuse and slightly more punishing system with the corruption thing, but all things considered it didn't change TOO MUCH in practical terms.
Conceptually it makes LESS sense, but in practical terms it's still a system that discourages the player from taking too many unnecessary rests without being exceedingly punishing, which in the end is all you are supposed to ask from a competent rest system in a CRPG.
The system with WotR is in practice unlimited rest. The corruption system on paper is supposed to discourage people from resting. The problem is that the bar loads so slowly that you have to rest every short while to get the first level of corruption at all.
About 90% of the locations in the game are so small that you cannot physically rest more than 2-3 times (if you do it after each fight).
In every larger location there are items (more than one) that reduce it practically to zero, so you can rest as much as you want.
There are supposedly random fights in the game while resting, but I have to admit that I haven't seen a single one throughout the game.
What really keeps players from resting is that after each rest you have to spend 5 minutes buffing.
Unless you have the ability that your buffs last for 24 hours, then you can rest again and renew all your slots for free.
