I liked him, as his own character. It's quite obvious that the Thanos from the MCU could never have turned into What If's Thanos whether T'Challa was Star-Lord or not, but What If seems to follow a different alternate version of not only events but also the characters.
I'm fine with it, like I said this is clearly like a crack fic just for fun, so it's kind of funny to see what could happen when characters are more OOC for the sake of forcing the plot.
MCU Thanos wouldn't give up on his quest since it wasn't ultimately based on either logic or altruism like he claimed but actually trauma and madness, but I do like that they kept some of MCU Thanos' personality in What If Thanos.
For instance, how they kept him a rather brooding, serious and isolated figure. Even when he was socializing with the other Ravagers and joking around, you got the sense he didn't fully feel like he fit in with them, or anyone for that matter, and still carried that sort of burdened, depressed, lone martyr state of mind.
I also laughed really hard when he and Korath were supposed to be faking a fight as a diversion, but Thanos started beating him up for real as revenge for calling him Captain Genocide. That seemed really true to the spirit of MCU Thanos inside him, that despite seemingly taking Korath's insults in the moment with a mere pout, he would actually be taking everything in, hold a grudge and wait for the right moment to take it out on him later because he is patient.
So yeah, overall, like most of What If's characters it's obvious they were not paying much attention to Thanos's characterization (Korath, Tivan and The Black Order in particular come to mind as other OOC interpretations) in favor of the plot the writers wanted to do, but they still kept a spark of the original Thanos in this version and so for that reason I can't be mad about it.
It's not official and doesn't affect the MCU characters themselves, so it's all in harmless fun, just like a crack fic brought to life. I don't take it too seriously because I don't think it was meant to be. I think people sort of think it's meant to show what would have actually happened in the MCU if one thing was different, but I don't think that's the case.
It's less just 'What if T'Challa was Star-Lord' and more 'What if T'Challa was a Star-Lord and a bunch of other things were different, independent of that, too, like the Black Order weren't loyal to Thanos, Tivan got ripped, Nebula had hair, and Thanos was motivated by actual altruism enough to be swayed in his beliefs'.
To suggest MCU Thanos would have been swayed by any logic is sort of a spit in the face of his whole journey in the MCU as well as the suffering caused by the snap, so it's obvious they weren't intending to imply that T'Challa could have actually swayed him.
It's ridiculous to think no one had ever confronted him with the alternative of reallocating resources before T'Challa, we even see Gamora bring it up in Infinity War and he immediately dismisses it because he's completely lost in his delusions.
If he didn't take Gamora's, the one person he is proven to love, advice, why would he take a stranger's and give up everything he had spent thousands of years working toward? Well, he wouldn't. Just like the Black Order would never betray him even if he stopped being a warlord, because they worship him as a savior.
So what's the explanation for what happens in What If? Well, it's different versions of the characters messing around for fun with Cartoon Logic guiding them, and I'm cool with that :) I like both versions for what they are, I just don't like when people try to apply what happens in What If to the real MCU, because they are missing the point.
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