Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Tyrannica]

My class could've been perfect but it wouldn't really have mattered without anything to do once I hit max level.

If you skip pvp as a rogue with its class design on its peak.....then yes, but tbh honest i never found rogue to be exciting in pve. Several other classes would fit there much better, there is only so much you could do as a rogue in pve. All that cc arsenal completely wasted basicly, you never need it pre-legion there was no mythic+ and your specializations are not different enough to entertain in pve long term, on the other side, rogue specs are totally exciting to play in any kind of pvp.

WoD was the last good pvp expansion. PvE content was a meme, though, same could be said about cataclysm, it felt very bad in the endgame, until you switched to pvp doing arena and rbgs, saying rbgs i think blizz should update the system of it, its too slow and probably too specialized to attract many people what is a shame and a complete waste.

I am not so harsh with WoD and its provoking selfcam patches, like most people, i played it when raid 2 unlocked, i think it was called blackrock foundry? Garission the build up sequence was fun, too, just not the mission table.

The original plans of WoD were very different from what we receives our garrison was a actually considered mobile and travel with us not be fixed on a zone. Also a lot of content was cut, its really a shame, otherwise this expansion had potential gameplay wise and rogues were really powerful, really ,really powerful most powerful class in the game, that unlimited burst of speed and feints without cds or really reduced cd, mountspeed without cd in stealth and without stealth, thats power dude!

Was fine with class lore too, imagine an agility class to be actually fast, and str class actually slower, the foundation of WoD was nailed, other classes were fluid too, like shadowpriests and dks in wod, far better than legion+ expansions.

So for me class design first, class power first......anything else second......who the fuck cares, where i am and who my enemies are? Give me powerrrrrrrrrr!

[ryanmahaffe]

This is mmo-champion/ the WoW community, every expansion is garbage, I have been here since Wod now and WoD sucked, Legion sucked, BFA sucked, Classic sucked.

In my opinion, Shadowlands is great, I am not playing much because work increased my hours but I still consider it one of the best expacs we have had in a decade.

[hulkgor]

So... in conclusion... like every other expansion, 'uh?

New stuff? People come in droves (and don't forget global lockdowns influencing people's at home time), and when they consume the content, they have other interests.

Then a new patch drops, a new raid tier, a new dungeon, and some are back.

How is this surprising to anyone?

New expansions bring a LOT of players back, which then leave (and might, or might not check content patches). It's been that way for 15 years. And every expansion is both the best, and the worst, depends on when you ask. Hell, some people claim WOD is awesome nowadays.

sigh, the hyperbole just gets boring.

[Tyrannica]

SL to me is at the bottom with bfa. I hope in 9.3 they let all hell break loose like multiple legendaries, absolutely dumb shit in torghast etc. Cause right now I'm just raid logging. Not enjoying anything else.

Everything in SL right now is barbones, its sad.

If you thought there is not enough pve content look no further and look at pvp, there is absolutely nothing at all, empty warmode lol

Dunno i think the director of this game should change......i think Ion is just a raid designer disguised as game director, cause lets be fair only dungeons and raids are ok in this game since legion+ expansions happened.

No new class and huge class design changes since legion is rather mindblowing a pve story driven expansion, like SL could easily introduce another cloth dd class. Lazy devs.(not the art team, they are cool)

- - - Updated - - -

So... in conclusion... like every other expansion, 'uh?

New stuff? People come in droves (and don't forget global lockdowns influencing people's at home time), and when they consume the content, they have other interests.

Then a new patch drops, a new raid tier, a new dungeon, and some are back.

How is this surprising to anyone?

New expansions bring a LOT of players back, which then leave (and might, or might not check content patches). It's been that way for 15 years. And every expansion is both the best, and the worst, depends on when you ask. Hell, some people claim WOD is awesome nowadays.

sigh, the hyperbole just gets boring.

WoD had the potential to be awesome, it never was awesome as the devs did not allow it just watch the many videos of content cut at YT its not hard to find.

Gameplay and class design was still superior to what we got now, and thats the bottom line. BfA was full of pve content and look how that turned out...nobody cared.

[hulkgor]

BfA was full of pve content and look how that turned out...nobody cared.

BFA is the first expansion where all the new 'systems' were absolute trash, and it was predictable from the announcement.

Warfronts and Island Expeditions.

The rest of the expansion was great, in regards to the typical dungeons\raids endgame, but geez, were those two features absolute trash and a waste of development\resources.

That said, there's no defense in regards to WoD. And let's not talk about ifs... by using ifs any expansion could have been -amazing-. The multiple garrison locations and farahlon(?) wouldn't have made a difference. I'll remind you that WOD had the amazing 1-apexis daily and the .1 SELFIE cam patch... let's forget about that expansion entirely, 'uh?

[Rusken]

I loved it for the first 2 months. Maybe I burned myself out but right now I have absolutely zero motivation to log on and do anything. The gameplay loop is just so bland, Maw dailies -> grind M+ -> raid clear in <2 hours -> repeat first 2 steps indefinitely. With the Maw being the worst zone ever and M+ being.. M+, I've been having a ton more fun leveling a new character in Classic.

I hope 9.1 is really good, I won't be playing it myself but I hope for those that stick around that it's fun at least.

[Gref]

I would like to have some sl transmogs but no fucking chance that I do the daily quests, or unluck them to get grateful offerings. I didn't even want to look info about it till like a week ago. I need to do dailies? to get 2 of them? So that I gather 50 of them to get a transmog? no fucking thanks.

I enjoy a +15 a week, mythic raiding .But that is it. Doing 1000 anima weekly quest is already fucking pain in the ass. Rescuing 20 souls. ughhhh. Torgast...It is just disgusting pure randm luck.Maw dailies? didn't touch it once.

[Tyrannica]

That said, there's no defense in regards to WoD. And let's not talk about ifs... by using ifs any expansion could have been -amazing-. The multiple garrison locations and farahlon(?) wouldn't have made a difference. I'll remind you that WOD had the amazing 1-apexis daily and the .1 SELFIE cam patch... let's forget about that expansion entirely, 'uh?

I don't mind that, the worst thing was by far that CRZ to Draenor was only applied in legion prepatch.

Legion Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Cross-realm zones have been enabled for the continent of Draenor.
Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): Cross-realm zones have been enabled for the continent of Pandaria.

Its the entire reasion why Draenor felt unpopulated and empty, while people thought it was garrisions.

I never cared for apexis, never did this grind, why should i? PvP gear was upscaled. I'd rather cared about a big pvp server full of empty zones to do the countless gladiator sanctum achievs as ahran did not not feel optimal to do if you play a melee.

And my point stands: class design in wod was superior to that of BfA absolutely zero contest, no selfie cam patch will change this fact, you guys care too much about unimportant fluff - only class design is important, it makes you wanna play this game in the first place.

[Swnem]

BFA is the first expansion where all the new 'systems' were absolute trash, and it was predictable from the announcement.

Warfronts and Island Expeditions.

The rest of the expansion was great, in regards to the typical dungeons\raids endgame, but geez, were those two features absolute trash and a waste of development\resources.

That said, there's no defense in regards to WoD. And let's not talk about ifs... by using ifs any expansion could have been -amazing-. The multiple garrison locations and farahlon(?) wouldn't have made a difference. I'll remind you that WOD had the amazing 1-apexis daily and the .1 SELFIE cam patch... let's forget about that expansion entirely, 'uh?

And what exactly is your standard? At launch WoD was amazing. Having your own place in the world was great, questing still the best, zones really good. I still go back to it. The classes were fun and the dungeons and raids were great.
WoD was great for raiders.

Your problem is with outdoor content and content support which was cancelled cause of the coaching necessary after the cancelation of Titan.
WoD was great while it lasted. The problem was it was cut short.

[Zyky]

I quit in mid-December this time. Earliest ever. Only one 60, even.

Looks like Blizzard loves tryhards. There are other games, so I'll go play them.

YMMV.

There's literally nothing to do for tryhards either, not sure what you're talking about. I'm willing to have a debate, but first I need specifics on what you're talking about.

[varren]

I think a big problem is Torghast and the Anima Power system both being flops for the most part. Torghast needs some different modes and cosmetic rewards, and Anima Power rewards need to be at least doubled across the board. Spending time on shitty SL flight paths to do a quest for 70 Anima is awful design.

The endgame meta also needs a shake up. This is essentially Legion 3.0 with the now stale raid/M+/rated PvP trifecta.

I will say it is still better than BFA, as Covenants are still better than the absolutely terrible Azerite Armor gimmick.

[chiddie]

Everything in SL right now is barbones, its sad.

If you thought there is not enough pve content look no further and look at pvp, there is absolutely nothing at all, empty warmode lol

Dunno i think the director of this game should change......i think Ion is just a raid designer disguised as game director, cause lets be fair only dungeons and raids are ok in this game since legion+ expansions happened.

No new class and huge class design changes since legion is rather mindblowing a pve story driven expansion, like SL could easily introduce another cloth dd class. Lazy devs.(not the art team, they are cool)

- - - Updated - - -



WoD had the potential to be awesome, it never was awesome as the devs did not allow it just watch the many videos of content cut at YT its not hard to find.

Gameplay and class design was still superior to what we got now, and thats the bottom line. BfA was full of pve content and look how that turned out...nobody cared.

Not that I care about WM (I have it off since alliance bonus was introduced 2 years ago), but I think that the no reps requirements for flying (which I just adore, don’t get me wrong) put the final nails in wpvp coffin.

[Muxtar]

opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. And yours doesn't smell better than anyone else's.

This I will remember. Very well said, sir.

[ro9ue]

I think the issues are as follows:

Torghast:
- Started out really fun but it was released in bad shape and by the time they fixed everything people already burned themselves out and wrote it off. Examples like gating the hell out of access for alts with quests and not letting layer level be account wide, and then releasing Twisting Corridors much later.
- TC came out after most people already got their fill of Torghast, and the expectation the developers have in terms of time investment is borderline insane. People liked mage tower. It was 1 10min boss fight that was challenging. TC is easy as hell but 18 floors per layer and could take your entire evening. Then I have to ask what's the point of layers 1 3 5? Only every other layer gives rewards. Why waste anyones time with those? Seeing people get dc at floor 15 and lose all that time in one of those is horrible.
- There's really no reason for most players to run Torghast for an extended period because you're typically going to craft 1-2 190 legendaries and be done with soul ash. No items drop for you here like visions did. Would be nice to let people run more condensed Torghast wings and get a couple items and a chance at some other goodies based on a few things they did during the run. Or have stuff drop during the run itself. There's no timer.
- Had great potential but in their efforts to chokehold progression and ultra timegate they managed to fuck the entire system.

Covenants:
- The mission tables released super imbalanced and broken. Not to mention not rewarding at all. The gold rewards objectively inferior to Legion missions. Rep rewards objectively inferior to Legion missions because they aren't BoA tokens. BFA didn't do it either so not specific to SL but it's still not fixed.
- Callings are just a more obnoxious version of the Legion/BFA caches. Why do you have to go pick them up first? Why can't they just be on your map...?
- Anima scarcity basically makes anything that costs anima not worth the time. 3000 for a bracer transmog from renown when the anima droprate is offensively bad. It's actually infuriating there are developers working on this game that think it's reasonable for a player to have to grind hundreds of hours to earn the amount of anima just to unlock transmog that we should've just received as a renown reward. Not to mention the other stuff like mounts and toys, etc.
- The covenant campaign story questing was so gated that you basically got little snippets dragged out over many weeks that would've been so much more smoothly experiences in 2-3 chunks. Gotta milk that sub time though.
- Renown is terrible. You aren't even earning half the progression rewards it's just unlocking your ability to buy the stuff with anima you don't even have.
- Abilities - Bottom line covenants just need to be cosmetic/story things. The ability kits should be talents. They should've given classes a new talent row, named the abilities more generically and then apply the covenant FX to the abilities based on which one you pick.

Gearing:
- Removal of TF was a bad move without substituting any decent progression for casual players. Basically the WoD effect, you get dungeon/LFR level gear and you're kinda done.
- Crafting legendaries is cool, but why the ranks? Is it so bad to just craft a single static 235 legendary with a reasonable amount of materials? After that each patch can have a new pattern craft a token or something to upgrade your item to the new ilevel cap like Legiondaries.
- The droprate of items is horrible in M+ and raiding and no way in hell I'm wasting my time with that. Truth be told, and this isn't unique to SL, but everything has become so linearly scripted that the PVE content isn't really replayable. Once you do heroic dungeons and LFR or normal, there's really no other reason to continue doing that unless you get sucked into wanting to play Ion's ilevel casino. They should really work on randomization of dungeon mobs, new AI and different dungeon environmental effects or something to change up the experiences each time you go in. Affixes are a solid idea for this but having weekly affixes is too static and should be more randomized.

Miscellaneous:
- Classes still feel hollow. This was an issue that was bandaided over with Legion artifact weapon trees, became super apparent in BFA and wasn't fixed for SL.
- All of the WQs are so much more annoying to complete than the Legion and even BFA ones and reward, comparatively, much less currency proportional to their value in the expansion. Look at your Broken Isles map, look at the very easy and quick WQ, and look at some of the resource rewards. Then think about what that currency let you do in Legion. Compare that to how much anima you're getting in SL and what that gets you. (some of these values have changed like AP/wakening but you get the point with order resources) It's miles apart.

9.1 / Future:
- 9.1 on the horizon looks like more maw, more torghast and speaking for myself I kinda had my fill of that. Of everything mentioned so far that's coming in 9.1, the only thing that's interesting is seeing the Broker megadungeon, but that alone isn't worth coming back for.


Final thought - This expansion feels a lot like WoD, but the issues aren't because there's nothing to do. There's a lot that one can do, but the developers designed everything in a way that it's so time intensive and gated that nothing is WORTH doing. WoD didn't have WQ, WoD didn't have M+. SL has end game systems and all these transmogs, toys and stuff that people can work towards but the devs are basically saying if you want this you need to spend 100hrs grinding anima or if you want that play RNG casino with no bad luck protection. No thanks.

Just would like to see Wow get back to being fun again. Everything feels so calculated, formulaic and hollow. The Torghast content feels like genuinely fun ideas that got ruined by overlaying time gating and arbitrarily extra layers and floors. Worst of all, it at times feels maliciously designed against the best interest of the player and with a complete disregard of the player's time.

[Dracullus]

I would like to have some sl transmogs but no fucking chance that I do the daily quests, or unluck them to get grateful offerings. I didn't even want to look info about it till like a week ago. I need to do dailies? to get 2 of them? So that I gather 50 of them to get a transmog? no fucking thanks.

I enjoy a +15 a week, mythic raiding .But that is it. Doing 1000 anima weekly quest is already fucking pain in the ass. Rescuing 20 souls. ughhhh. Torgast...It is just disgusting pure randm luck.Maw dailies? didn't touch it once.

So you're doing M+15 and raiding and somehow 1000 Anima is pain the ass? Not to mention that you can just skip it and get extra renown from world boss, I assume you're not min-maxer since you didn't touched Maw, so being 1 renown behind shouldn't be a problem.

[Raisei]

Everything in SL right now is barbones, its sad.

People wanted grind to be completely optional, now it is. People hated to do Islands and Warfronts, now they are gone, people hated to grind for Visions, now it is no longer necessary. The focus of the game is M+ and Raids and those are as good as before.

This is what people wanted and Blizzard obliged, now the same people feel they have nothing to do.

If you thought there is not enough pve content look no further and look at pvp, there is absolutely nothing at all, empty warmode lol

This is purely the fault of the PvPers who wanted to quickly finish their weekly quest and thus camped in the Maw or at other choke points in groups to kill solo players.

"If you don't want to be killed, opt out of warmode!"? Well, guess what, that is what people did and they aren't coming back.

[kamuimac]

People wanted grind to be completely optional, now it is. People hated to do Islands and Warfronts, now they are gone, people hated to grind for Visions, now it is no longer necessary. The focus of the game is M+ and Raids and those are as good as before.

This is what people wanted and Blizzard obliged, now the same people feel they have nothing to do.

not people

raiders and streamers

thats what mythic raiders and streamers wanted

and blizzard made a mistake catering only to them

it already costed them >50% of subs

by 9.1 it will be 80%

who could have guessed that catering only to 5% of your playerbase will make 95% eventually quit. such a shocking unpredicatble twist there.

i mean they didnt even bother to put in legacy buff into Legion raids to at least keep transmog farming crowd in game - how lazy is that. who could have though it was a good idea to do that ? jezus.

can you imagine any other company openly saying to 95% of your customers "well f...... you " (said in Cartman voice) ?

anyone responsible for such fiasco would be long fired.

how is Ion still game director ?

- - - Updated - - -

BFA is the first expansion where all the new 'systems' were absolute trash, and it was predictable from the announcement.

Warfronts and Island Expeditions.

The rest of the expansion was great, in regards to the typical dungeons\raids endgame, but geez, were those two features absolute trash and a waste of development\resources.

That said, there's no defense in regards to WoD. And let's not talk about ifs... by using ifs any expansion could have been -amazing-. The multiple garrison locations and farahlon(?) wouldn't have made a difference. I'll remind you that WOD had the amazing 1-apexis daily and the .1 SELFIE cam patch... let's forget about that expansion entirely, 'uh?

BfA didnt loose 50% of playerbase on month 2 of expansion

which makes you factually completly incoreect

about content - i had no problem to make 30 man group for WF at middle of week at 3am in 5 minuts - repeatedly - thats how many people were enjoying them

show me singular contant in SL that would gather 30 people at 3 am in middle of week .

all this BfA hate was nothing but marketing tool used by streamers to gather their paying audience . there was not a single real problem with BfA from casual player perspective.

[baskev]

snip

nice list.

additions:

Thorgast:
it depends on what class you play and how lucky you can get with powers. my alt paladin at ilevel 170 gets futher then my main 200+ because of shitty powers ( and yes i have venanri stuff)
And it should drop anima or gear or something more.


Covenants:
nothing to add here. you correct.


Gearing:
Again i agree.
You gear low levels or you need to raid. There is almost no in between.


Miscellaneous:
they should add old WQ tipes of things to do. Like puzzels etc. the variation is very low.
And the rewards are also piss poor. some of the WQ take a "while" or are "hard" to do. Not saying they are really long etc. just the time vs reward is silly. spend 10/15 min doing WQ to get 100 anima. 30 more of these and i might be able to buy something from my faction vendor.


Also proffesions. They are weird. because of the bots and multiboxxer and multibox botters the low end mats are so plenty making money etc on stuff is not doable.
Farming is hard because of them ( notes disapear). And high end stuff take a rare resource that is harder to get ( thanks to them). And also has weird sell prices.
And gear gets useless so freaking fast. It should last longer.
And crafting mark only after completing a lot of quests etc in the maw. It should be faction based. Not rep based for a very specific piece of content.

And missing some fun/cool stuff in some proffesions. where are the glyphs, mounts etc. find the proffesions very sparse right now. They feel like the pruned classes we had before.


also, where is that mail icon we are getting?

[The Butt Witch]

Final thought - This expansion feels a lot like WoD, but the issues aren't because there's nothing to do. There's a lot that one can do, but the developers designed everything in a way that it's so time intensive and gated that nothing is WORTH doing. WoD didn't have WQ, WoD didn't have M+. SL has end game systems and all these transmogs, toys and stuff that people can work towards but the devs are basically saying if you want this you need to spend 100hrs grinding anima or if you want that play RNG casino with no bad luck protection. No thanks.

Especially true.
I mean what content is there worth doing?

*World quests? Why? The sanctum upgrades are literally NOTHING, not even fun content, and sure as hell not needed for anything. You get the mounts and transmogs while leveling, unless you really want recolors of the same stuff.
*Torghast? Why? The content is extremely boring and only worth doing for capping the weekly soul ash. It's the SL version of warfronts.
*Reputations? Why? They mean literally 0 in SL.

The only content worth doing are M+, raids and rated PVP.
Oooohhhh wait! Raids barely drop anything, you don't even get in an M+ pug if you play certain classes or specs because they're trash, and rated PVP is the definition of TOXICITY.

FUCK SHADOWLANDS

[VinceVega]

I love SHadowlands. I can finally Raidlog and am not forced to do shit content like Islands or farm Artifact Power day ind and day out.

If you watn to do more you can. Stuff is there.
But finally you don't have to.