None of this should come as a big surprise considering Microsoft first announced plans to deprecate WordPad back in September 2023. Still for some, it may be hard to see yet another piece of legacy software being phased out.
WordPad first shipped as part of Windows 95, and was positioned more as an enhanced version of Notepad than a full-fledged word processor. It could still get the job done in a pinch but anyone serious about word processing would likely have reached for something more capable like Microsoft Word.