Btrfs has some nice features - e.g. compression and snapshots, which i didn't knew i'd even like before using them. Not only they have saved me a few times from bad updates ("saved" in the sense that i was able to pretty much instantly revert, it saved time, i wouldn't lose anything even without btrfs), but they also help with things like "i'm going to run this script to process 29837894293 files - and the script might have some bugs in it, so i want to be sure i wont lose anything" (i.e. make snapshot, run script, check results, compare snapshot with current state to ensure nothing is lost, delete snapshot). Snapshots are also useful for diffing FS state, e.g. before and after installing some program.

As for the stories, AFAICT often the reason is that the user didn't know they could get their data back - or they are stories from many years ago when btrfs was buggy, but AFAIK those issues have been long solved (i think some specific case with some RAID setup still has issues but this is hearsay and AFAICT from the same hearsay, that setup isn't really necessary with btrfs in the first place).

Using btrfs is more complicated than using ext or something similar, especially since most tools that deal with files/filesystems are made only with ext-like features in mind - to the point where sometimes i wonder what the point is and i'm considering switching to ext3 or ext4, but then i remember snapshots and i'm like, nah :-P.