I've had the "fortune" to work with SOAP as well (java implementation) and I never could shake the feeling that it was designed with the intention of being obscure. It seems you could employ an entire batch of consultants just to deal with defining, implementing and changing SOAP APIs (kind of a misnomer I know). The whole change from SOAP 1.1 using an ActionHeader to SOAP 1.2 using an action parameter seems downright misleading. Or downloading WSDL files to automatically create Java classes sounds great in theory but now your program has additional obscure classes with very weird syntax and you have to read through numerous reference guides just to know how you can modify the header of an outgoing request. Such a waste of time.
In my experience, it wasn't that. Larger companies put value in supporting standards, because it is an important checkbox in their marketing, and SOAP is definitely a standard.
