Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Th3Scourge]

It would be great if they would stop nerfing the content tho. Torghast went from being a proper challenge at the start of the week to being a breeze now

Easy content is what makes shit get real boring real quick

[Deadite]

Could be a bit early but i think Shadowlands will rate pretty low in the order. Like all expansions it was pretty great for the first couple of weeks but now? Nothing seems to be rewarding. Wq's have garbage items and mostly pathetic amounts of anima. I know this will go up when we get further on but just now sheesh. Items are rare and low level. I have done every emissary quest , sorry 'Callings' , since about a week into this expansion and with the exception of one conduit nothing but vendor trash.

Now my Class hall , sorry Covenant Hall , is pretty shit as well. The command table has a ridiculous cost to heal your troops and pretty shit rewards as well. My fairy garden is another hilarious joke by Blizzard. In the 8-10 seeds i have planted you get a bag with 3 fish or 5 meat. Pumping a thousand anima weekly and waiting three days for that?

I have went three heroics and not seen an item drop for me. I know this could just be a bad luck to me problem but i have seen heroics with no loot dropped unless people purposely never looted items. My three 60's got one item from the last World Boss and only my mage got an item from this boss and i think that was the a guaranteed lego power?

I find the Maw to be terrible and Torgash to be wierd. My hunter can roflstomp it but i have only done to layer 6 on him. My mage was like beating my head against a brick wall. With the new nerfs i blew past the first 7 layers with only the odd last boss giving me trouble but could not get past the floor boss on floor 2 on layer 8. It was one of them wankers that have the stacking buff that makes them move fast and do more damage and they become immune to CC. Blow all cooldowns and he was still 70%. One wack each to my mirror images and one hit to break my shield. That was with the new 70% more as well. One hit and i am in my cibe that heals me by 60%ish then i am dead.

[Th3Scourge]

It is only the 1st month. Any expansion has been praised by players as good/great during its 1st month. It doesn't mean much.

Check it again in 2 months.

BfA was brutally panned in the 1st month

[skiersteve1]

I want to really get back into wow havent played since legion and I started in wotlk but I just cant get back into it, ive got a couple of different classes but highest is only 54, Every time I log on the game just feels meh, I want to love it but everytime I log I feel like logging off and I have to force myself too play, the couple zones I did play look stunning and my shadow priest feels fun too play but theres just something missing feel like as ive gotten older I enjoy more casual multiplayer games and single player games, unsubbed for now, maybe a few months and the spark will come back, I enjoy reading and watching wow but not playing it

[ashblond]

BfA was brutally panned in the 1st month

This is just wrong.

BFA first month was highly praised.
- Players were happy with BFA zones and questline
- Players were excited with Kultiran and Zandalari lore and allied race
- Players were amazed by Boralus and Dazaralor city
- Players were hyped for warfront and islands
....

It didn't turn out very well.

SL had less hype and lower expection than BFA.

[Queen of Hamsters]

well simply for the fact that there is no bullshit legendery rng,huge titanforge +70 ilvl procs,no infinite ap grind makes sl better than legion by default,all thats left to make it better than mop and tbc is for the content to come at a good pace and have the raids be pretty good with some interesting items

Gonna take a lot more than that to beat out Legion and especially MoP in my book.

[Eurhetemec]

This is just wrong.

BFA first month was highly praised.
- Players were happy with BFA zones and questline
- Players were excited with Kultiran and Zandalari lore and allied race
- Players were amazed by Boralus and Dazaralor city
- Players were hyped for warfront and islands
....

It didn't turn out very well.

SL had less hype and lower expection than BFA.

That's not true either. BfA was heavily criticized long before release for Azerite stuff, and the Azerite stuff was indeed pretty boring/annoying from the get go. Further, they hype for Warfronts and Islands was low/medium at most. It was more like "Yeah maybe that could work" rather than people being excited.

Also, you're re-writing history with Kultirans and Zandalari - people were fucking pissed because they weren't in at release, and you're writing like they were. They weren't actually added until 8.1.5 - by which time the honeymoon was long over, and people were no longer particularly keen on BfA. So that whole angle is bullshit.

You're also wrong to state every expansion is well-regarded in the first month. Looking back having played since Vanilla open-beta, there's actually been considerable variance. And it hasn't mattered whether there's been more or less hype. I mean, you claim there's "less hype" for SL, but it sold more copies, and raised subs more than, say, Legion, so what the fuck? Clearly your hype-measure, even if accurate, is irrelevant. Plus, people were ridiculously turbo-hyped for Cataclysm, and it was a trash fire, and we knew it was a trash fire not long after release. MoP people were, if anything, anti-hyped for, and it was one of the best expansions overall.

Personally I'd say that currently SL is the best expansion at this point in the expansion. Yeah, the best, I said it - but at this point in the expansion. No other expansion has been as fun and rewarding, at this point in the expansion, as SL is. The big question is, will it stay that way? Will it improve? Will it get worse? The fact that they've made RNG so much less of an impact, and gear so much more targetable, is for me, huge, and bodes really well. My favourite times in WoW have always been when RNG was lower and gear was more targetable. Those have also been the times I've stayed subbed longest.

Shadowlands has given me the feeling it's better to be not playing it than to be playing it. The personal cost and annoyance exceeds perceived benefits, to an extent I have never seen in any WoW expansion.

Not surprisingly, I have stopped playing it, even though my sub runs through February. And now that I'm falling behind, the "not playing" feeling can only get stronger.

The only time I have ever felt this way -- stopping playing with little regret -- is in other MMOs when I stopped playing one for good.

This sounds like a you problem, not a game problem. If it was really a game problem, then when I experienced it in early Cataclysm, that should have been the end of WoW. Also when I felt that way in mid-WoD. So when you go from thinking of this as your personal issue to a general issue with WoW which, hilariously, you think will "end WoW", you're falling into a classic MMO-player problem, where they think their personal feelings, which often aren't even that closely related to the game or its systems (more often their changing life circumstances and attitudes/interests), objectively represent the quality of the game. That's some crazy hubris.

That you've never experienced it with WoW before helps show it's not a game problem - by any measure you like WoW has been drastically worse than how SL is now, many times. So this is you, not the game.

[Dervrak]

I'm enjoying it so far, it seems the Blizzard has finally found the sweet spot. In WoD, after you finished the levelling quests there was nothing to do but sit in your garrison and farm resources. Then they went to the other extreme in Legion and BfA, where you felt obligated to put in 20 hours a week on dull world quests and rep grinds to gear up. However, in Shadowlands, they've finally adjusted it so you can gear up equally well multiple ways by doing what you enjoy doing. You like Torghast runs? Then work on getting legendaries. You like mythics and raids? Then do them. You like doing world quests and build up your covenant, then do that. You like PVP? Then gear up that way. But you don't feel obligated to do all of them every week. You can put in just a few hours every week doing what you like doing and still feel you aren't falling behind too much.

[Baconeggcheese]

Class design still hasn't recovered from the legion shift in design philosophy and balance is very very poor right now as expected (though probably for different reasons than expected).

BUT I'm still enjoying myself. Took a break from the game during BFA and came back for this with some buds and we've been having a good time.

[Razorice]

Oh yes, definitely enjoying the expansion so far. My only real complaint are the conduits and their swap CD.

[Queendom]

So far it's the same old Legion which we know it for 4 years.

[Masternap]

1. Vanilla
2. TBC
3. WoTLK

Every time I see these in this exact order I already know this isn't about quality anymore. It's nothing but nostalgia.

[Queen of Hamsters]

SL had less hype and lower expection than BFA.

Simply not true. It broke sales records and had people excited to move out of BfA. Have you checked the quarterly reports recently? Because nothing you say is supported.

And yes, BfA was heavily panned during the 1st month. I remember that too.

[Eurhetemec]

Every time I see these in this exact order I already know this isn't about quality anymore. It's nothing but nostalgia.

Yup.

I seem to be much less impacted by nostalgia because WoW wasn't close to my first MMO, nor was TBC anything like my first MMO expansion. I'd been playing since 1999 when WoW came out. I do have nostalgia and similar feels - but just not for WoW, for Dark Age of Camelot, which was actually my second MMO, but was the one I got into most, and the only one I had 16-hour days in and so on.

And frankly? TBC was not a particularly good expansion. It really shouldn't be anyone's #2 expansion if they're not playing Classic or something. I get that Vanilla was enough it's own thing that people might genuinely prefer it, but TBC coming in #2 is pure nostalgia. It was a dubious expansion on a whole bunch of levels, which I'm not going to go through here (because it'd be a megapost even by my standards), but the point is, it's rep is mostly due to it being the first expansion, not due to being good.

WotLK is a bit more interesting because I think a better case can be made for it, but yeah, strict chronological order on those means nostalgia.

- - - Updated - - -

Simply not true. It broke sales records and had people excited to move out of BfA. Have you checked the quarterly reports recently? Because nothing you say is supported.

And yes, BfA was heavily panned during the 1st month. I remember that too.

Yeah it's like, what is his hype measure measuring? Maybe hype on some very specific messageboard or Discord or something? The sales/subs records have been pretty clearly stated by Blizzard.

[Arainie]

I asked to make all hardcore content optional. But we still have mandatory Maw.

How is the Maw hardcore? You literally have to do one 2-minute quest per week after the first intro quests and you're done.

[Osmeric]

This sounds like a you problem, not a game problem.

Every problem is both a "you" problem and a "game" problem. The game doesn't play itself, and we are not robots without preferences.

I realize others may feel differently than I do, which is why I give my reaction with so many personal pronouns. You are not required to agree in your reaction, but you should not dismiss that others are feeling negatively.

I think it's remarkable that this expansion has made me react so differently than BfA did. I can't put that down just to me.

Your argument there can be used to dismiss any criticism of the game. It's a defense mechanism to reject uncomfortable criticism, and the possibility that this is not just a "me" problem, but a "me", and "him", and "her", and "also him", and "those others", and etc. problem.

[Demithio]

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.

It is interesting to hear from someone who started playing WoW about the same time did (2005). I also have basically hated everything that came after cataclysm and the direction the game has went. However, I do find it hard to believe that anything released for WoW these days can resemble anything like TBC or Wotlk, unless Blizzard made some giant, sweeping, redesigns they didn't tell anyone about.

I haven't bought it, but from what I gather, the game seems even more isolationist, "spoon fed - on rails", than ever - I could be wrong. The era of TBC / Wotlk and now are essentially two different games with two different mindsets.

[Doffen]

Unlike BfA and WoD that was never particularly good, Shadowlands is a quality expansion. Player is in focus again, not powers, and I didn't think it was a big deal, but during BfA and WoD I felt there wasn't anything that was worth doing, unlike the things in Shadowlands and Legion before that. Legion had proper power progression, while Shadowlands has a better character progression outside of power. Back in the day, the story for your character, powering up through dungeons/raids was the whole game. Shadowlands toned down rental power progression immensely, while making more way for the old ways.

In WoD they failed all that, while also fail power progression, because there was next to zero. While BfA tried too much to take the power progression from Legion but failed in almost every way to reinvent the wheel. In Shadowlands they go away from it and I like this new, old direction WoW has taken in Shadowlands.

May it continue.

[Aggrophobic]

Hahhahahahhahahahhahahahhahahhahahhahahahah.

Mature, really.

[Souflikar]

So far, so good. Easy for me to say because I unsubscribed during the last 6 months of BFA. Just couldn’t do it anymore. Let’s see how things turn out with SL patches, storylines and hopefully minimal content drought. Keeping the majority of players happy is a tall order for Blizzard. If they don’t change things up, ppl complain the game is old and stale, change too much and ppl complain it doesn’t feel like wow anymore. I’m guilty of that train of thought. It’s a tough balance but hopefully blizzard can pull it off.