Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Zantera]

I always find people's obsession with flying fascinating. Personally I think it's one of the worst things added to the game.

[Aggrophobic]

I can only speak for myself, but so far, this expansion is on par to be my new favorite. It has already knocked TBC out of 2nd place and is heavily breathing down the neck of WotLK for first. I came into this game Jan 19, 2006, and after Cataclysm, have just not been impressed with the DLCs that followed. Granted, that is just my personal, subjective opinion. I am speaking for no one but myself, nor am I claiming my opinion to be imperical data on the state of the other DLCs.

Is anyone else either seeing Shadowlands move into their number one spot, or at least rapidly climbing the ranks? I know we still have a ways to go in this expac, but if 9.1 and 9.2 are anything like the launch, I have no doubt this expac will apologize for the last 4 in my book and become the new number one on my list.

Oh? So far it has taken the spot as the second worst expansion ever for me.
Can't really think of anything the expansion does well really but I can for sure think of quite a few things it does very, very wrong.

It's a long way to go so it might very well be the worst in the end, who knows.

[Mendzia]

It is not fair comparing 1 month to 2-3 years but looks very solid so far for me.

WotLK > TBC = Vanilla >>>>>>>>>> Pandas = SL >>> Cata = Legion >>>>> WoD = BFA

[erifwodahs]

I have yet to play shadowlands.
But based on the overabundance of lame sylvanas, the still not repaired classes and the lame jailer villain are enough to make sure shadowlands can't get in the top 4 of my fav wow expansions.

But that still makes it possible it could prove better than wod, bfa and cata.

Classes are nice to play tbh, feel way more complete than BfA version. Not all ofc.
We have yet to see of what kind of villain Jailer is, so if you have decided that he is lame, it might be your prejudice what downgrades SL.

To the OP:

Does not beat Legion for me and while it's just a start, I believe this is better than WotLK, if I had to play it now. Hopefully they keep up!

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I wrote something but this thread, as well as couple others, including the recent Torghast fiasco, just lead me to belieave wow players are a special kind of a lost cause.

You are one of us, if you want to generalize so much

[Cazze]

Classes are nice to play tbh, feel way more complete than BfA version. Not all ofc.
We have yet to see of what kind of villain Jailer is, so if you have decided that he is lame, it might be your prejudice what downgrades SL.

To the OP:

Does not beat Legion for me and while it's just a start, I believe this is better than WotLK, if I had to play it now. Hopefully they keep up!

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You are one of us, if you want to generalize so much

That fact hasn't escaped me . I am, after all, here, trying to argue about god knows what, with god knows who, because of 16 year old videogame.

[MoanaLisa]

I don't believe there's a ladder to climb and a year from now it's a sure thing that it will believed to be "the worst expansion ever" on this forum.

FWIW, I like the expansion as well. I'll reserve judgement on it until it's all out. I enjoyed Cataclysm when it was first released. Afterwards, Blizzard turned it into one of the great shit shows of all time.

[TickTickTick]

I would enjoy it if it wasn't for the loot changes. Don't get me wrong, I think it's good they slowed down the gear progression. But when you leave it to a total RNG, you make a room for some extremely depressing cases. It really takes the joy out of playing seeing as after 2 weeks of 9/10 hc clears I only got one loot, meanwhile the other person is almost in full hc gear by now. I know it's just RNG, but it just feels fucking bad to be on the not-receiving side. You prevent trading the loot if it's stronger than what you have, you decrease the ammount of loot, one thing that you could do Blizz is at least implement some kind of no-loot protection. Getting NO loot for 16 bosses straight is insulting.

[Tesshin83]

Seems very good so far. Amazing lore and storytellkng. Classes feels good and covenants always make you have something to do next to raiding.

[SirFinlot]

Didn't play much of BFA, so I can compare casual life to Legion.
It sucks for me, to be honest. Content is way to fragmented and mutually exclusive.

Back in the Legion, if you did only World Quests, you would get gear, AP and progress towards legendary. If you opted for dungeons, you were still progressing.

Now you have to rot in Torgast for that Soul Ash, which for some reason cannon drop in open world or dungeons bosses. You need it for Legendary.
Farm dungeons, so you could play open world faster.
Farm anima, which for some reason does not drop from anima rich dungeon bosses or Torgast.

Tho one thing is the same - Broken Shore style main quest. Where every week you would progress just a little. It's the same with the Covenant and Renown. For some reason you have to sit and wait so you could play more.

Leveling process was atrocious in Bastion and Ardenweald. Story is all over the place and I dislike it.

I used to play Hearthstone up to new reward system fiasco. It's same shit. You are forced into the content for the sake of metrics.

Tho I am logging in from day to day, till my sub runs out within few days.

[cparle87]

We've seen Sylvanas like one time. You're free to your opinions but it seems odd to make a judgement without first hand experience. This isn't me trying to defend SL, it has some serious flaws IMO (Thorgast lacking rewards for repetition), just correcting what some people assume about an expansion while being way off.

The wings we're doing now are for dust, nothing more. The endless repetition for cosmetics wing isn't out yet.

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I would enjoy it if it wasn't for the loot changes. Don't get me wrong, I think it's good they slowed down the gear progression. But when you leave it to a total RNG, you make a room for some extremely depressing cases. It really takes the joy out of playing seeing as after 2 weeks of 9/10 hc clears I only got one loot, meanwhile the other person is almost in full hc gear by now. I know it's just RNG, but it just feels fucking bad to be on the not-receiving side. You prevent trading the loot if it's stronger than what you have, you decrease the ammount of loot, one thing that you could do Blizz is at least implement some kind of no-loot protection. Getting NO loot for 16 bosses straight is insulting.

That's... how it's always been?

[Kuntantee]

It's OK so far. Still too early to make a verdict.

[Izzyfurious]

Shadowlands is quite good. I just wish they would stop nerfing all of the content.

You are delusional if you want this to happend. You'd have to remove all casuals or players in the game that for years and years of blizzards instant gratification design. Have being so used to this facing any sort of longer unexpected Adversity. They cannot overcome. And this is because of blizz's sh*t design since idk how many expansions.

Basically, fire a bunch of blizz's game designers and hire new ones who dosen't cater to **** players.

[oderon]

That's true even without azerite...
I can't come close to performing as frost with my fire gear.

Yes, but as DPSer you do not need to switch to different spec based on content. As a healer you kind of have to.
There is more and more solo content to do in this game with each expansion.

[csguba]

Easily the best expansion for me in a long time, WotLK holds the crown for me but I could see it beating that potentially.

All specs feel viable in both pve and pvp, I love the pacing of arena pvp right now (even if there are a couple outliers), Castle of Nathria is one of the most fun raids imo in a very long time, the Vault is a massive improvement in the system, crafted/targeted legendary's are great and I absolutely love not having to do WQs. Torghast is enjoyable for me right now but we'll see how that one continues because I also liked Visions a lot on introduction. I even like that there's less loot as it now feels more meaningful.

I really can't think of many flaws with SL they've done a stellar job (so far!).

[Mamut]

I have yet to play shadowlands.
But based on the overabundance of lame sylvanas, the still not repaired classes and the lame jailer villain are enough to make sure shadowlands can't get in the top 4 of my fav wow expansions.

But that still makes it possible it could prove better than wod, bfa and cata.

Meanwhile Sylvanas showed maybe twice so far and my Shadow Priest got rework that made his spec probably funniest to play with alot of toolkit since he is ingame.

[Azerate]

It certainly feels very fresh with all the new system and covenant based gameplay. I enjoyed BfA, but kind of felt like more of Legion with some changes, this is an entirely new thing.

For me wow expansions are not really about the content, but about the experience overall, and that comes with playing with friends, as well as background real life situations. For those reasons Wotlk and BfA will be my all time favorites, probably forever.

[oldgeezer]

Yeah, I dunno. Speaking from a strictly casual perspective I'm not all that excited by it. It all seems very clunky. There's a lot of friction in getting stuff done. And there's a lot of stuff to do, but most of it seems like a chore. I'm also distinctly 'meh' about the setting.

I'll keep playing on my main, for now, but for the first time that I can remember I have no interest in levelling alts up in the new content. As an altaholic this is a problem.

[james2400]

I enjoy SL but it does have quite a few negatives.

To much timegating
Removal of flight whistle is a major QOL pain
World quests are awful the worst in a very long time
Revendreth while looking fabulous is a major PITA to travel and the mob density is ludicrous
Oceanic servers this is a big one every single zone is stuck in perma lag since day 1 and no improvements so far

[Uvania]

I'm already back at classic again, this new approach wasnt for me and the entire experience is "meh" with so much focus on "the maw" and torghast, i hated visions and this isnt much better.

PvP was great fun during the bg event week since proper ally players queued up once again and we actually had a chance against the big bad hordies.

Leveling experience is by far the worst i've ever experienced in shadowlands, actually that bad that i spent a few days the first week leveling an alt through BFA content from 10-50 instead.

Community is as toxic as usual with its "gogo" mentality and rushing through content in a heartbeat.

Waiting on a TBC announcement at blizzcon in february instead

[Ladey Gags]

Yeah, I dunno. Speaking from a strictly casual perspective I'm not all that excited by it. It all seems very clunky. There's a lot of friction in getting stuff done. And there's a lot of stuff to do, but most of it seems like a chore. I'm also distinctly 'meh' about the setting.

I'll keep playing on my main, for now, but for the first time that I can remember I have no interest in levelling alts up in the new content. As an altaholic this is a problem.

Holy shit dude me too. I used to have at least 2 alts leveled at this point in EVERY previous expac. Alts were my saving grace when I got bored of the daily chores and dungeon spamming on my main. But now I’m starting to feel that boredom and I’ve tried leveling my shammy (always my second char to level) but I finished bastion and haven’t logged back into him since then, been a week.

There’s just too many systems. Too much BLOAT. This is the first time I’ve started regularly PvPing since I started playing the game 11 years ago because everything else in the game feels so fucking contrived and the thought of leveling another character just to be met with 5 different max level systems makes me feel physically nauseous

I miss the cata days when I had a few dailies to do, and then I could just queue up for heroics and be fully pre-raid geared. That’s what the core game should be in my opinion. I really miss queueable difficult dungeons. God I wish they would just make mythic 0 queueable already