Here's my take on the whole situation. - Bioware is scared of bad publicity.
I played this game off and on since launch and I remember we used to have an OWPvP area, while it wasn't the best thing ever developed it was STILL PvP content. Across the interwebs and forums all you saw were people bashing SWTOR's Illum because SWTOR's game engine wasn't able to support. Eventually Bioware removed it even though it just as easily could have been left the way it was (Or at least keep the daily missions).
Now we have Ranked Warzones getting removed. We're a year into "Pre-Season" and no signs of an actual Season 1 starting. You look up "Ranked Warzones SWTOR" in a search engine and all you see are people bashing it saying that it's still in Pre-Season and they haven't even mentioned when Season 1 is going to come out. Bad publicity on a feature of their game.
Bioware's motto is if it's making us look bad then we'll just remove it so people can't talk smack about it because it isn't even a feature anymore.