Rate Shadowlands

[Stacko]

I'd probably say a 5 or 6. It's not terrible, but it still feels like BFA & Legion. I can't stomach M+ anymore, I don't care for the way they design raid boss mechanics now, & I can't stand Arenas anymore due to the way classes are balanced. Honestly, the game just isn't for me anymore, even on a casual level.

At least it's better than BFA though, but not by a huge margin.

[ashblond]

The AOE cap is just stupid, especially since it hasn't been evenly applied.

Class "de-pruning" in my opinion was mostly a failure and seems like it was just a gimmicky "selling point".

I totally agree with these 2 points.

[ashblond]

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/w...ft-shadowlands

Metacritic User Score 5.6

[docterfreeze]

Better than legion and bfa, still needs more unpruning. 6.

[A Chozo]

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/w...ft-shadowlands

Metacritic User Score 5.6

C'mon, we know damn well Metacritic is unreliable, otherwise a game like The Last of Us Part II having a similarly mediocre score would mean that it too is a lame game, and I'm sure that's not true.

[javierdsv]

If they fix the loot issues and lack of rewards in general it will be a good expansion. I liked Legion better, but still.

[Zao]

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/w...ft-shadowlands

Metacritic User Score 5.6

Oh yeah. Those 0/10 reviews (and 10/10 reviews for that matter) really seem super objective. User score on metacritic has never been reliable. Unless anyone here wants to seriously argue that SL is a 0/10 or 10/10 expansion.

Personally I like SL it's a solid 7.5/10 for me.

One of the main pros for me (which seems to be a con for others):

I feel like I can be done for the week. I have no infinite gear grind because of titanforging or AP grind. I get my weeklies done, do my 10 +10 keys and pug the raid.
That's usually done by Saturday.
Then I can do whatever I enjoy, Torghast, farming some old mounts, transmogs, achievements etc and grind some rep.

And if I don't care for doing that, I can just play something else for the week. I don't feel like I have to play to not fall behind like it was the case in BFA and Legion.

The story so far is enjoyable, if cheesy. But it's miles above BFA.

The raid is decently challenging (with some cool bosses, Sire is fantastic) and so is M+. Though admittedly I've done neither at the highest levels.

A large con for me is the covenant system. I enjoy the covenants in general. But I hate that I have to choose between Looks/lore and what's best for my class if I want to be optimal. In my case it luckily coincided, and I don't care about optimising my alts. Others are not so lucky.

I'm looking forward to the future patches.

For expansions I'd rank this somewhere above cata and below mop so far, that might change depending on the rest of the expansion.

[arucado3]

I'd give it a 6

[Osmeric]

I normally keep playing an expansion. The exception was I stopped playing Cataclysm in Feb 2011.

For SL, I stopped playing in December. Worst expansion ever, by far.

[HateTrain]

Voted good, but on the lowest end of good. Like...6.75. It beats BFA by a country mile.

[dope_danny]

For my money i'd call it pretty mediocre. Theres some neat ideas in there but overall it feels like a game that wants to charge you monthly rent but only 4 of those 30 days have things of significance that aren't the same old instanced shit we have been doing in some fashion for years and for a sub fee that you can use on multiple other things like audible, netflix or whatever 4 days a month is not really worth it for me and i can't recommend it.

Granted that could change in updates but right now it feels like BfA with a less interesting story and more obtuse gating thats going get the same reaction once the new shiny wares off and the cycle continues as usual.

[Soon-TM]

I normally keep playing an expansion. The exception was I stopped playing Cataclysm in Feb 2011.

For SL, I stopped playing in December. Worst expansion ever, by far.

My three months sub expires by the end of this month, and I won't be renewing it. Even BfA got me to play 8.0 in its entirety, despite its multiple issues. Two months of SL, and I've already hit a brick wall when it comes to progression.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Between a 6 and 7. Expansion is far better than BFA which I enjoy but not liking the way they've "nerfed" m+ (not vault) with loot and how it just applied to TW Ulduar. Torghast is far better than Visions but pvp for me imho is still a mess with covenants like Druids convoke dropping people in 1 shot or Kyrian rogues (I know they nerfed Echo Rep) dropping any classes that doesn't have an shield. Legendary Mark of the assassin that allows them to drop people in a span of few seconds. Maw is neat to an extent and look forward to seeing that expanded upon.

[Doffen]

If Legion was 9 and BfA was 2 then Shadowlands is a good 8 for me.

[Syegfryed]

Gameplay wise is good, need a few tweaks in RNG and other things, like how awfully long and time consuming the WQ are for little reward.

The lore is Awful, not worse than BFA(yet) for sure, but it is bad

[Alanar]

Shadowlands introduces another set of useless additions that make me sad, how the team thought these were fun features.

Conduits, souldbind and table missions.

They werent fun in wod, legion, bfa and now shadowlands.. I just dont get it and what is even more weird is that the shadowlands one is the worst of all.

Thorghast and the maw, I have said tons about this already and I can honestly say these features have failed.

Pvp.. yea we are back to getting killed in a stun, your reaction time doesnt matter anymore. You are just getting one shot most of the time. Stuff like Convoke and the hunt for prima examples.

Costumizations.. I was excited about it. An actual trailer features that realy feels half assed and in the end we didnt realy get alot of new options. I guess for the people who care can roll a human and maybe look a little bit more like yourself.. wow who cares you dont go into a magical world to be yourself realy imo, but what ever.

I am gonna stop here.. I dont even bother talking about reward s, because this is a motivation thing, nuff has been said about it.

Once again, it feels like they didnt realy learn from past expansions and keep making the same mistakes. 9.1 HAS to be an upgrade to the game, because I fear many people will not have the motivation to continue.

I am actually realy dissapointed with Sl atm, beta felt better then the actual live game.

Sure the art is great as always, but this time it will not save the gameplay. Its not looking good imo.

I will give it a 4 or 5 for the effort atm.

[VinceVega]

Edit: Nevermind

[Biomega]

5/10

Class Mechanics: 8/10
Chores: 6/10 because Maw, otherwise 9/10
Dungeons: 9/10
Raid: 9/10
Expansion Systems: 5/10
Lore: 2/10
Loot: 3/10

[ashblond]

Its not even close to the same level. The Soulbinds are non noticable buffs to stuff. You don't change your rotation or anything. You don't get a new power. It is just max level progression.
Yes in a sense it is borrowed because it goes away in the end. But if they disable it right now you would not notice it until you looked at the logs or recount.

Azerite changed my rotation, Artifact gave me a whole new ability. Essences too and corruption was just huuuuge impactwise.

I am sorry but i call bullshit here. Yes it is borrowed power but i would not call it that simply because of how the term borrowed power is used.

THank god we have more than gear regarding max level progression.

This whining about borrowed power is getting out of hand a bit in this case

And anima? Really? You don't even have to touch anima. Just the 1000 anima quest a week which you can do with about 4-5 quests.

The borrowed power is very imbalanced atm.

NF hunter with wild spirits do 20-30% more damage on aoe than non-NF hunters. NF boomkin convoke can 1 shot multiple people in arena, which is more impactful and worse than any essence/corruption in BFA. etc...

And oh yes, I can get 1K anima very fast every week in SL. But in BFA, I didn't need to farm AP at all. I didn't do any AP world quests, islands or emissaries. We got AP from missions, dungeons, races, etc. insanely fast. I laugh at people who complains about AP farming when they don't need to.

In SL, weekly Torghast is mandatory if you need ash, and there is no alternative. SL calling quests are worse than BFA emissary quests in every possible way.

[ujx]

It's the best expansion since WotLK. People say Legion was great but it wasn't great having to farm artifact power and do 20+ other daily WoW chores.