Basing reliability on older drives is a fools errand, every batch and model is different and you won't know it's good or bad until it's long off store shelves.
Yes, the first 2 and 3tb Seagates were fragile, but before that WD were often considered that way. IBM used to make drives that were thought to be rock solid before they all failed so bad the company sold off the whole HD division to Hitachi to avoid a bunch of lawsuits. Those same drives are now considered pretty good. SSD are no different, people swore by OCZ, that is until they disregard the flash memory suppliers recommendations and overclocked the chips. That debacle was so bad they entire company was sold off.
I will say one thing though, I have a 4TB WD external, it seems fine, but it is NOT a Sata drive. If you ever decide to remove it from the box and place it inside a laptop or raid it will not work. WD built a custom pcb, it has the usb built in and no sata port. The big externals use a normal sata drive, however the usb to sata adapter in it will only work with a WD drive. Seagates all tend to be normal drives inside so you can remove them and use them wherever, same with the adapters.
Best advice, use an ssd. If you need to use a spinner, keep an eye on it, they all suck.
Personally, I've seen so many failed WD drives I won't touch them unless they are a special purpose model (Raptor, Black, Red, etc.) or I just need it in a hurry. I all but refuse to buy Blue. I know people who are the exact opposite for the exact same reason, only buying specialized Seagate but perfectly happy with a normal WD. We each think each other is crazy.
Oh, and don't go by Backblaze drive stats, I wish they wouldn't bother posting them as they have no bearing at all on typical desktop use.
