Blizzard's lack of respect towards players is the reason why i quit Shadowlands.

[Harbour]

Usually the reason to quit SL is a very bad work/reward ratio. Up to certain point its true for me too.
But the main reason i quit WoW 1.5 months after release was the clear realization that SL developers DONT respect me, the player and customer.

I played every aspect of SL and can point at two major parts that define the disrespect towards players:
1)disrespect towards players time
2)pure incompetentce.

WoW always asked for a certain amount of time spent to get the rewads. It was fine every new expansion. Shadowlands took the crown of how every single part of gameplay designed to make player spend more time in the game with very little payoff.

1) Hamsterwheel time machine:

• WQs are put far from flying/teleportation point to make player run all the way to get to them.
• Map terrain designed the way to make player spend a lot of time to run around. Verticality of the landscape is the most brutal across all expansions.
• No whistle, no two way Oribos-Covenant portal are made to make players spent 5-10 minutes AFKing during flying. It struck me often how much time i spend in the game just AFK in the air while moving to different locations.
• Introduction story has no reason to not have a skip button. No reason at all. Its not fun beyond first time and its tedious.
• MAW. You know the deal.
• Anima requirements. 35-105 anima rewards, rarely 250. 1500, 2000, 3000 anima cost of a single reward piece that has already been put behind Renown or Quest time wall. 5k, 10k, 20k anima cost for Covenant upgrades. People who designed THAT dont care about players.
• Rare loot that makes players spend more time to get the rewards. Its in no way meaningful, since the game for a decade was designed so you can replace your item piece that you couldnt get for a few days in like a half an hour with lucky random drop. It makes no sense to make loot drop so rare.

2) Pure incompetence. 
It boggles my mind how this game felt like it was in beta stage even 1.5 months after release.

• The most glaring one was the Maw Elite WQ that spawned twice a week. There are four rotating WQ with 1% chance to get the Maw Mount. I dont know was it fixed by now, but 1.5 months after release only ONCE i did that WQ succesfully. The rest were bugged in one way or another. You come in, you cant finish the quest, you check it out on Wowhead, you see people in the comment section sayin «Yeah, the quest isnt working». And this is pretty major Maw feature.
• Covenants werent tested out, neither powers, nor features like the commander table. The fact that it took Blizzard two months to somewhat bother to fix them with a tons of feedback that was given week 1 is a mindboggling. This is not an indie developer, this is 30yo rich company and the 15yo game.
• Bugged WQs. For a month doing one or another WQ i encountered some sort of minor or major bugs that werent fixed for a week or longer. I still wonder did they fix the ground bug around one of the Bastion’s transport point, where you COULDNT use teleportation (which was bought by Transport System upgrade for a 5k anima power btw) after completing daily activity, unless you relog.
• Torghast not being tested at all. Anima powers and mob scaling are way too off in between specs and classes. Twisted Corridors arent balanced at all.

I encountered everything i described above and to me this is enough to feel how developers despise me, whil asking my money for the game. I realized i cant encourage this attitude towards playerbase with subscription. It must NOT be tolearated.

[Aggressive]

Usually the reason to quit SL is a very bad work/reward ratio. Up to certain point its true for me too.
But the main reason i quit WoW 1.5 months after release was the clear realization that SL developers DONT respect me, the player and customer.

I played every aspect of SL and can point at two major parts that define the disrespect towards players:
1)disrespect towards players time
2)pure incompetentce.

WoW always asked for a certain amount of time spent to get the rewads. It was fine every new expansion. Shadowlands took the crown of how every single part of gameplay designed to make player spend more time in the game with very little payoff.

1) Hamsterwheel time machine:

• WQs are put far from flying/teleportation point to make player run all the way to get to them.
• Map terrain designed the way to make player spend a lot of time to run around. Verticality of the landscape is the most brutal across all expansions.
• No whistle, no two way Oribos-Covenant portal are made to make players spent 5-10 minutes AFKing during flying. It struck me often how much time i spend in the game just AFK in the air while moving to different locations.
• Introduction story has no reason to not have a skip button. No reason at all. Its not fun beyond first time and its tedious.
• MAW. You know the deal.
• Anima requirements. 35-105 anima rewards, rarely 250. 1500, 2000, 3000 anima cost of a single reward piece that has already been put behind Renown or Quest time wall. 5k, 10k, 20k anima cost for Covenant upgrades. People who designed THAT dont care about players.
• Rare loot that makes players spend more time to get the rewards. Its in no way meaningful, since the game for a decade was designed so you can replace your item piece that you couldnt get for a few days in like a half an hour with lucky random drop. It makes no sense to make loot drop so rare.

2) Pure incompetence. 
It boggles my mind how this game felt like it was in beta stage even 1.5 months after release.

• The most glaring one was the Maw Elite WQ that spawned twice a week. There are four rotating WQ with 1% chance to get the Maw Mount. I dont know was it fixed by now, but 1.5 months after release only ONCE i did that WQ succesfully. The rest were bugged in one way or another. You come in, you cant finish the quest, you check it out on Wowhead, you see people in the comment section sayin «Yeah, the quest isnt working». And this is pretty major Maw feature.
• Covenants werent tested out, neither powers, nor features like the commander table. The fact that it took Blizzard two months to somewhat bother to fix them with a tons of feedback that was given week 1 is a mindboggling. This is not an indie developer, this is 30yo rich company and the 15yo game.
• Bugged WQs. For a month doing one or another WQ i encountered some sort of minor or major bugs that werent fixed for a week or longer. I still wonder did they fix the ground bug around one of the Bastion’s transport point, where you COULDNT use teleportation (which was bought by Transport System upgrade for a 5k anima power btw) after completing daily activity, unless you relog.
• Torghast not being tested at all. Anima powers and mob scaling are way too off in between specs and classes. Twisted Corridors arent balanced at all.

I encountered everything i described above and to me this is enough to feel how developers despise me, whil asking my money for the game. I realized i cant encourage this attitude towards playerbase with subscription. It must NOT be tolearated.

I would have to agree with you on all this. Blizzard is fucking horrible at balancing shit. It is, by far, their worst trait as a gaming company. The sad thing about it is that the community has told them this for 17 damn years and they are just too arrogant, or too stupid, to listen.

[Zka]

Sooo I'm not the only one noticing their intentional timewasting strategies. It's incredibly annoying.

TBH I'm quite sure they have been working to increase a time-spent-ingame KPI for several expansions now, because their management is completely moronic. The trend to waste more and more of our time has been clearly visible since WoD or so. In BC and LK they worked hard on wasting LESS of our time, but they have reversed a few more expacs in.

To the incompetence list you can safely add m+ tuning again. Some encounters and some mob ability+affix interactions are/were very much untuned once again. Not sure how is it now, stopped playing about 1 month in.

[Lothaeryn]

I'm afraid you're not going to get much sympathy from this forum. Most of the people still here are cult-level obsessed with this franchise and company; that Blizzard can do no wrong to them.

Inb4 kthxbai/youdeservenothing/blizzarddoesntoweyou/youdonthavetodothosethingsthen/killyourself

^<- Thats the majority of replies when anyone calls out or critiques design decisions Blizzard has made over the years, its always the same fucking rhetorical responses and strawmans without an honest discussion.

This forum has a ton of Libertarian cocksuckers who think anyone who can't make/produce/achieve everything in a vacuum is inferior and relying on a functional society is a weakness. They apply the same logic to video games, anything YOU as the player do or don't do is strictly your fault, regardless of the countless systems and social structures that affect or alter your experience in games.

I've all but cut my ties with Blizzard for most of the reasons you've stated and more, I rarely frequent these forums these days but I stick around to keep up and discuss offtopic and Cinema subforums. The rest of it is a waste of bandwith.

[Frozenbeef]

Yeah, haven't been subbed since December (first time I've ubsubbed since wows release)

My issues with the game are slightly different..I think shadowlands is absolutely beautiful. However it obviously wasn't designed for players like me for what I enjoy so why bother wasting my precious time trying to change what I enjoy to match blizzards dream.

[cparle87]

Snip

Developers of a game make game content take time to do somehow equals the developers don't respect the playerbase. That's so far past mental gymnastics and entitlement I struggle to find words for them. But I'll try.

1A. Has always been a thing.
1B. There are numerous ramps and transportation methods up and down, you not bothering to find them is not Blizz's problem.
1C. There is no flight path in this expansion that even lasts 5 minutes. Try Darnassus to Gadgetzan maybe we'll talk.
1D. How dare they make you play the game?
1E. Empty whining.
1F. If you can't get 10k anima in a week by the time you get more souls for the next upgrade that's an on you problem. After the covenant is done then you have 2 goddamned years to buy the rest of the cosmetics.
1G. I'm not even sure what your point is here.

2A. You mean the hunts? Wow, a rotating WQ with a lot of phasing and moving parts has difficulties. Such incompetence. /s
2B. I love people like you who think that throwing money at a problem will fix it. Even if "feedback" was given on week one they are under no obligation to change anythning to suit what you want. I also love how you flat out lie to us and tell us they weren't tested, then turn around and immediately reveal your lie by talking about them allegedly ignoring the testing that was allegedly not done.
2C. Have you ever bothered to read any of Blizzard's posts about how they bug fix? They sort the bugs by importance, dealing with gamebreaking things first. Some transport thing not working unless you relog is going to be very low on that last. Then they go to work on them. They only have so much time to fix as many things as possible. If even a big bug looks like it might take a long time to fix, they'll set it aside for later and work on the next one.
1D. Torghast is supposed to be built like a roguelike, it is supposed to be completely unbalanced. It's not supposed to be balanced. You're arguing that your chocolate cookie has chocolate in it. Also again nice declaration that it was not tested.

[Krakan]

They are stretching out the tedious content quite a bit this expansion... they seem to be back pedaling hard leading up to blizzcon. Will see if jts going to get better or they are going to announce new grinds.

[Aphrel]

just wait until you start buying conduits from venari in the maw... whoever designed that is either a sadist or a moron.

And yeah, the covenant rank 3 upgrades... are ridiculously expensive considering how "meh" the rewards are. I don't think i will ever upgrade my stuff unless either cost is nerfed or rewards is buffed.

Oh and after two months, i finally get exp missions again... but my base followers was nerfed so i cant complete any of the lvl 55-60 missions anymore..

[Nyel]

Sooo I'm not the only one noticing their intentional timewasting strategies. It's incredibly annoying.

You're not, everyone is. It's the biggest complaint about Shadowlands as it's everywhere.

Blizzard is slowly backtracking, but the damage is already done. It's as obvious as just one mailbox in Oribos or having no flight whistle, but it's way more than just that and negatively impacts the game / perception of the game.

[Relapses]

In other words, Blizzard "disrespected" you by refusing to personally consult you when designing their billion dollar video game franchise.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm afraid you're not going to get much sympathy from this forum. Most of the people still here are cult-level obsessed with this franchise and company; that Blizzard can do no wrong to them.

lmfao -- do you even read the thread titles here? Everybody just wants to circlejerk themselves into the fucking stratosphere for having the super unique opinion that Shadowlands isn't as good as {insert expansion here}. (Usually it's WotLK but sometimes it's Legion.)

[Devilyaki]

A few days ago people couldn’t leave oribos, ether falling to the maw or flying out would just keep you constantly falling. The separate zones are a major issue..

[seriousquestion]

I would have to agree with you on all this. Blizzard is fucking horrible at balancing shit. It is, by far, their worst trait as a gaming company. The sad thing about it is that the community has told them this for 17 damn years and they are just too arrogant, or too stupid, to listen.

Same however don't be so naive to think that blizzard cannot balance. They can they just choose not to.

With some classes overpowered that gives everyone not playing a retardedly overpowered toon the option to level one this creating another (insert number) of hours with the feeling that they are actually achieving something and excitement.

Fast forward a few weeks and these players forget that there toon is retardidly overpowered and come to the conclusion that actually they are skilled and knowledgeable in the class that have less than 48 hours played time on

I left for this reason. People who play these overpowered toons do not see it or they refuse to accept the majority of there overpoweredness is not down to them but down the the class they are playing. Point it out? Expect a tyrade of abuse as there dillusional bubble has been damaged.

They think they are skilled. I dont want to be spoon-fed like that im a good player on my own but not when blizzard absolutely bums the crap put of my toon. What then? I'm all of a sudden a bad player am I? I need to reroll in order to show people that I'm still a good player?

All the casual crappers are welcome to there rng weekly spoonfeeding socialcraft game.

Cannot....be.... bothered....anymore.

[Dracullus]

*slowly walks away from something that definetely sounds like weekly Karen's meeting*

[KTM]

feels like ppl never played another mmorpg.
Aside the judgment on the quality of the objectives, it's the base of an mmorpg to make u waste time. i remember in daoc there were no mounts, just an horse that worked as a train. u jump on and after days of ride u had to jump off. if u were distracted u would have gone who knows where. In black desert u set up what's your destination and the horse brings u there after a while. Unbalanced classes, unbalnced objects, minor bugs, they are all presents in all games on different degrees.
if u are not happy with the current state of the game, just unsub and go play something else like gw2 or final fantasy. i'v played wow since the release of the american beta, and on every expansion there was something that pissed off someone. I mean, you know how this game has been for 17 yars, why are u still suprised.

[Qnubi]

Games as a service are flawed in concept for the customer. They all want to waste as much time possible, in the least obvious way, so you play as much as possible. Weekly things are not here to reward us, but to make you login at least once a week. They can totally remove the awful weekly cache and increase loot back to where it was, but that would mean you sub a month or two less per "season". We are getting exploited by these games. Its also not WoW exclusive, of course, they all don't respect our time and waste it on every opportunity

D4 will follow the same formula and I guarantee you it will have "weekly" resets, or activities. A shame.

[Relapses]

Games as a service are flawed in concept for the customer. They all want to waste as much time possible, in the least obvious way, so you play as much as possible . Weekly things are not here to reward us, but to make you login at least once a week. They can totally remove the awful weekly cache and increase loot back to where it was, but that would mean you sub a month or two less per "season". We are getting exploited by these games.

Time gating sucks... but complicated quest lines that take weeks to months for everybody to complete are perfectly fine!

[Yriel]

Totally agree.
The anima thing is especially outrageous.
With all the upgrades and all the stuff you can buy from renown/reputation vendors you need several 100.000 anima and they really implement WQs that give you 35 for killing 10-20 mobs on top of flying and riding there in the first place. Why is that even in the game?
But even with the 70-140 quests, sure there are no-lifers that spend like 20 hours each week topping their anima but for normal folks that play maybe 1-2 hours a day that would mean all i could do ingame is farming anima. Thats absurd.
Anima is such an stupid and unnessecary grind for not even good rewards, it's mind boggeling.

[Lochton]

1)disrespect towards players time

This is highly subjective. They have to after all operate the game based on peoples playing time. They also have to spread out content based on the development of the map. They also have to design zones to actually be interesting, and not just Mulgore plains where the worst obstacle you could meet with a lake or a tree. I don't get the people who badly want flat boring zones.

[Subrias]

just wait until you start buying conduits from venari in the maw... whoever designed that is either a sadist or a moron.

And yeah, the covenant rank 3 upgrades... are ridiculously expensive considering how "meh" the rewards are. I don't think i will ever upgrade my stuff unless either cost is nerfed or rewards is buffed.

Oh and after two months, i finally get exp missions again... but my base followers was nerfed so i cant complete any of the lvl 55-60 missions anymore..

Why would you waste stygia on that... I'm saving for socket items

[Djuntas]

I encountered everything i described above and to me this is enough to feel how developers despise me, whil asking my money for the game. I realized i cant encourage this attitude towards playerbase with subscription. It must NOT be tolerated.

I agree as well. There are a lot of obvious things wrong with Shadowlands. Why one should just never bother play on launch. I waited like a month anyway...But even then it was still with a few bugs here and there. Like achievements being bugged. Also yes...my gut the anima grind is silly...You cant spend your souls fast enough thats gated behind a weekly quest...Hoping 9.1 will give us flying asap also.