Rate Shadowlands

[TheFirstOnes]

Zones 1/10 (Maw drags the score way down,worst zone ever made)No mount...weekly soul quests that INCREASES to 20 souls...yeh no thanks...

Raid 1/10 (Fights are meh,loot doesnt exist...)

Leveling 6/10 (Was ok speed,I dont like I'm still tied up in "story" 4 quests for each zone if I dont chose story mode again for alts)

Alt friendly 0/10 (To gear that rarely drops,to weekly renown,damn torghas...took them a while to even open layer 8 for alts if you done it on main,still its just no...)

Dungeons 5/10 (Even after some nerf,some dungeons are just overtuned and stuff hit like truck....and trynical should just be removed)

Story ?/10 (Never cared about it so what ever,dont care if Sylvanas ends up selling muffins in Maw as long the gameplay is good but ,yeah..gameplay...oof...)

Only thing to do ingame now is M+ and that is mostly controlled by idiots using raiderio score crap...."+15 1.5k IO,Blood of your first newborn,your house and a happy meal"

Even though I have over 50 runs that are over +15 keys,i still play more decline simulator than actually playing the game...this raiderio is one of worst things that happened to wow...

Almost all of your list doesn't deserve a 1/10. The hell?

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My list:

Let's start off with the Pre-patch event: One of the more boring ones. Music is cool and all, and fighting the bosses in Northrend is neat, but the scourge stuff itself should've been more fun. The plague's not enough. 4/10, probably?

The Leveling: Quick, simple, enjoyable. Some quests drag on, but that's what happens when dipshits try to continuously rush through the content for a quick boost. 7/10.

The Story: I'm enjoying it, so far. I loved the whole Devos and Uther plot, Anduin's plot is very interesting (Unless you legit just straight up skipped the expansion and went into the story without context), the whole Ardenweald plotline is incredibly entertaining and mysterious, the Primus plotline is still on the questionable points and can be a BIT bland (We'll likely see the Jailer's forces assault the Sepulcher of Knowledge prior to the Covenants invading the Maw. We'll likely keep the Primus' key in check, and try to use it against Zovaal at the Maw, tho it'll fail, and he'll just get it anyway), Bastion's plotline was aight, the Maw is being expanded upon which is amazing, I love the idea of Korthia, the potential Dreadlord plot is almost brilliant writing which calls back to the days of the old lore, Denathrius and Revendreth are peak, the more I see shit on the Jailer, the more I love him, the Brokers are a top tier addition to Warcraft, and regarding the First Ones? They're interesting. I wanna know more of them. My only concern is Sylvanas. She actually kinda ruins this stuff for me. 7/10. Would be an 8 or MAYBE a 9 atm Sylvanas and Tyrande not fucking existed in this story...

Mythic +: Much better than BFA, still fucking irritating. Free 226 Great Vault gear tho, even if you fail a +14-15 key. 3/10. Fuck storming. And no, Valor doesn't change shit.

Raids: The fact we don't have a mini raid concerns me? Other than that, Nathria is very mid. I honestly expected the bosses to be more fun than they were. Unfortunate, that the gear drop rates also suck total donkey dick. Very disappointed with raiding so far, I really hope the SoD raid's better. 3.5/10.

PVP: Class balance needs work. Other than that, this has been some of the most fun I've had in PVP since MoP. 8/10.

Art/Music: God tier, some of the best I've seen since WoD and patch 7.3 with Argus and Antorus. Oribos' skybox is cool, the zones are developed incredibly well, and the In-between + its music is quite possibly the coolest and most unique thing I've seen come from WoW in a LONG LONG time. 10/10.

World Quests: Tedious, long, and bland. 2/10.

And, lastly, the Maw: Whoever designed this...this...THING! Fuck you. Fuck you to the deepest depths of the Sanctum of Domination. Seriously, why? WHY!?! YOU DIDN'T NEED TO DO THIS, BUT YOU DID! You somehow managed to make WoW's hell...well...HELL, both in lore, art, zone design, and in game design. Idk if I should be very fucking pissed off right now, or extremely fucking impressed and arguably pleased with this development. I've never had a panic attack before when playing fucking WoW...that's how bad this zone is. -100/10.

Conduits: 5/10. Not too bad, not too exciting.

Renown: Kinda easy to catch up on, but Renown in itself is just...there. :/ 4/10, bland.

Anima: Can I please just afford that fucking set? Holy shit, getting anima sucks dick. I'm so glad this shit is optional, otherwise this would've been arguably worse than Artifact Power + Azerite Power. 4/10.

And, lastly, Covenants and the "choice of the player": Don't make me laugh. Get to your BiS covenant for your spec, that's it. Even if you hate that covenant, too fuckin bad. 0/10. Stupid fuckin system. The fact almost no one is going Necrolord, and most class specs are forced to go Fae shows you just how dumb this system is.

Like, Night Fae Death Knights? Are you on fuckin drugs rn?

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Overall: Shadowlands is...meh? Got some great stuff, got some ok stuff, got some bad stuff. The endgame is bland at worst and pretty fun at best. Just feels like 6.0 tbh...but with some more flavor applied to it. That's both a bad sign, as well as a good sign.

My rating is a 5.5/10, or a 4.5/10. Not a great start to an expansion that's supposed to take place right after one of your worst Expac's to date.

[Olololo2r5]

2/10


2. torghast ( even after the nerf) just takes to long to enjoy. you rather play everything safe because you dont want the run to be useless so no masspulls or fun stuff like that. it just takes forever and is exhausting


in conclusion: in our community

Are torghast runs really that rewarding and risky that you need to play it safe? No wonder its a chore

[Uvania]

2/10


Pros:
- More hyped for TBC Classic then ever before!
- It still has old content that can be farmed for mounts/x-mogs and pets.
- PvP was good the first month and is still decent during bg weekends and brawls.
- Character Progression were really fun for me as a casual untill you hit the "wall" around 205 ilvl.
- So much to do


Cons:
- So much to do
- Anima "grind" is unbearable and actually pointless, i think i would have given shadowlands 3/10 if they would have left out this currency since im sick of having a stupid currency to "farm" from world quests every expansion since legion.
- Community is toxic-deluxe and you are forced to do insane weekly grinds to keep up with the "pack" and if you dont have enough rio score ur alienated from pugging content
- LFR is still around and still 100% pointless since the loot is worse then world quest items and regular honor pvp items / covenant armor set.
- The Maw is the shittiest "end-game" content ive seen since i started playing in 2005 and before that my worst "content" zone ever was nazjatar.
- Thorghast is lame repeatable content with little to no interesting rewards as most of the rewards can be bought off AH since its like 90% battle pets.
- Story is the worst its ever been, i dont like it and i dont feel like it fits in World of Warcraft.
- Performance, i have 32gb's of DDR4 3200mhz ram, NVME SSD at 1tb, R7 3700x cpu and RTX 2080 Ti GPU and i have to run the game at medium settings to have a stable fps above 100 fps with a target of 144fps in 1440p with ray tracing disabled which sucks donkeyballs, even WoW Classic looks better imo,
- World Quests, time consuming boring random repeatable content to get us more hooked in the daily hamsterwheel slot machine.
- Legendaries, wasnt good in legion and isnt good the 2nd time around, either create "story" upgradeable legendaries like the cloak in MoP or ring in WoD or just make it something that can be acquired from raids for the really dedicated people like it used to be pre-MoP.


Neutral:
- Covenants, i like it but as an completionist i dont like it since it forces me to change it over, this has been an issue since TBC when we had to choose between aldor/scryer, i want all content to be available for everyone on ONE character not having to play so many different chars to do all aspects of the game.
- Dungeons and Raids is overall good but nothing special.

[ashblond]

The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

Covenant is THE core feature of SL. What is the point of spending so much time and effort designing a core feature that players don’t have anima to use? Or players can only fully experience when SL is over???

This severe lack of anima design makes no sense. And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

[Weeps]

The highest rated expansions for me are BC, Wotlk, mop, and Legion.

What gives high marks for me is raiding. If the expansion compels me to raid, that means I’m super interested.

Didn’t raid after Uldir (BFA) and haven’t since.

For a super casual, Shadowlands is ok. 6/10

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The Anima drought is too much at this point. For people who says anima is only for transmog and optional, or we have 2 years to upgrade our covenant, etc., please don’t be tard.

Covenant is THE core feature of SL. What is the point of spending so much time and effort designing a core feature that players don’t have anima to use? Or players can only fully experience when SL is over???

This severe lack of anima design makes no sense. And no wonder many have quit before even unlocking any covenant feature or upgrade.

I do wish Anima was given more often. I do want to grind for everything related to anima but not when it comes at such a trickle pace

[DarkAmbient]

Worst ever expansion for me as someone who doesn't raid. The zones suck to play in and Torghast is a boring grind with no worthwhile rewards. World quests in SL are awful. Absolutely no point levelling alts when the new zones are so annoying. Unsubbed earlier than any other expac.

[Argorwal]

After playing now for a few months I would rate it a 7/10. I would put it after Legion and MoP.

To me the reward structure makes the most sense than it has in a long time. All 3 end game paths (raid, mythic+, rated PvP) are the closest they have been to being alternate/equal (approximate!) progression paths.

Progression encourages making friends, communities, and guilds to work together. Less focus on single player progression, but it’s still there up to 200 which is a solid baseline item level.

And there is no significant uncapped power grind, no stupid RNG titanforging, etc. a small grind for the bleeding edge for sockets/top conduits that the rest of us can ignore.

4 different campaigns as some repeatability to leveling different characters. Not as awesome Legion with 12 class campaigns, but better than a faction specific campaign like BFA or generic leveling like most of the previous expansions.

Castle Nathria is a good, challenging opening raid even on heroic with 10 bosses which is refreshing from the last few expansions.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think my initial assessment of a 6-7, closer to 6, still holds true for me. It not as bad as BfA, but it's also nowhere near as fun as Legion was for me. Alot of the systems are duds in my opinion, because they are neutered to the point of feeling pointless and tacked on (like conduits, soulbinds) or so grindy and annoying that I just don't want to engage in them anymore, despite liking what they offer in rewards (anima, covenants). The raid was meh for me, and drops below average due to the loot provided (or more to the point the lack of said loot). M+ has been drained of all the fun for the sake of another failed Blizzard e-sport. They did improve some things and thank god they didn't force ultra RNG in every single aspect of gearing (like legendaries), though it's still rather bad unless you go full ham to maximize your chances (vault). I like threads of fate very much and I had some fun in torghast, though it could be way better. The story is a mixed bag but it's mostly serviceable for what it is. I could see people giving it a 5 as well, if you actually use the scale properly and say 5 is average, because that is what it feels like to me.

[Edward Wu]

I think I gave a rating in this thread months ago, and my opinion of the expansion has since dropped somewhat, so I'll update my thoughts.

Pros:

+Raiding is still enjoyable and offers high quality design, both with a guild and in pug form.
+Torghast is a success and the gameplay offered is enjoyable. Twisting Corridors on some specs can become really fun.
+I think the zones minus The Maw are well designed and a pleasure to look at. The questing experience wasn't bad at all.
+Some of the covenant abilities are cool and the Soulbind system is a nice little boost to customization but nothing special.
+The Vault is an improvement over BfA's weekly chest system.
+Gearing remains better than it was in BfA and removing Titanforging was the correct decision.

Cons:

-The M+ system is pretty terrible to me, even with the new addition of Valor. Pugging M+ is absolutely unbearable regardless of me tanking or dpsing.
-The Maw is a badly designed zone and completely unfun. Very low quality content being offered here and I don't understand the design fantasy of a zone that is intentionally making your experience miserable. If this was supposed to be an "overcome the challenge" zone they didn't sell the fantasy at all. Just pure tedium.
-PvP is in complete shambles to me with boosting ruining Arena and War Mode still being a complete and utter pile of feces that's ruined unorganized PvP for me.
-Covenant Campaign was low quality and i did not enjoy any of the weekly quests or story elements. The finale in particular for Necrolords was completely awful. I hated every second of it

Overall rating: 6/10

WoW remains a stale experience and SL has done little to change that. SL makes WoW even more of a segregated lobby simulator than ever. Overall I'm not a fan of the direction the game is heading, gameplay-wise and story-wise.

[Dystemper]

2/10 fastest I ever unsubbed with no desire to ever come back. Blizzards corporate bullshit just solidifies my decision

[Marxman]

I rated this a 6/10 when this thread was first posted, but I wish I could change my vote to 4/10 now. It's certainly an improvement over BfA in systems design, by a lot, but the content has suffered significantly from the COVID work schedule I think.

-CN is a mediocre raid at best.
-8 Dungeons, many of which just aren't good (SD, ToP, PF).
-Covenant balance and storylines have been very bad. Total waste of time imo.
-Class design is improved from BFA, but still not great. Still leans too heavily on external systems (Covenants/Legendaries/Soulbinds).
-World content has never felt more hollow and pointless. Anima grind is mindless tedium for the sake of it.
-The rewards system was obviously a total shitshow until 9.0.5. It's still not great even with the recent improvements.

I like that SL is unshackling players from the daily grind, and I like that much of the RNG bullshit is gone from Legion/BfA... but outside of that, SL is fairly hollow and mediocre. There isn't nearly enough content, and the content we have is flawed.

[Tuhokoura]

Worst part of this expansion is m+ (again) and it not being in LFG tool. It is infuriating to spend 30minutes to an hour setting things up and then shuffling franticly for 10minutes. Its like sex in marriage.

[exsanguinate]

Voted 'Good' at the beginning. Meanwhile it's a pile of you know what I mean.

[ashblond]

Worst part of this expansion is m+ (again) and it not being in LFG tool. It is infuriating to spend 30minutes to an hour setting things up and then shuffling franticly for 10minutes. Its like sex in marriage.

SL has much more problems than just that.

[probert]

The least interesting wow expansion to date.

BFA was bad, but there were lots of things to do. Whatever there is to do in SL is gated, meaningless progression.

It definitely feels like they sacrificed any RPG / economy / casual aspects of the game in protection of mythic+ / raiders, then they screwed up the raider/mythic gear AND made very questionable dungeons and Castle Nathria.

so bad raiding, bad class changes, weak world content, bad travel, bad story, less content than BFA overall, and slow release of content changes.

Torghast is the worst roguelike i've ever played. and The Maw is the worst zone in WoW history.

So i gave it a 3/10. BFA in retrospect gets bumped up to a 5/10.

WoD was more fun to play, but a sabotaged expansion. Cata broke most of the old world and had awful raids, and set in place the 'every patch is a reset' culture so it was bad.

But nothing as bad as this.

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Worst part of this expansion is m+ (again) and it not being in LFG tool. It is infuriating to spend 30minutes to an hour setting things up and then shuffling franticly for 10minutes. Its like sex in marriage.

ok that's a good joke.

[Cosmic Janitor]

SL has much more problems than just that.

The statment was just flat out wrong. The expansion only centers around m+ if you make it so. You can just do your 1 run a week for more chest options or you straight up go and raid mythic or do high level PvP. The later is aslo the best working gearing strategy right now.

[Marxman]

So i gave it a 3/10. BFA in retrospect gets bumped up to a 5/10.

Can you explain why SL being bad retroactively makes BfA better?

I agree SL is bad, but that does not in any way make BfA better. BfA is still the worst that the game has ever been, hands down.

[NordWitcher]

I bet a lot of people in that poll would vote differently now. I would have vote a high 7/8 early on. Shadowlands definitely felt fresh the first month. The economy was booming, making gold was easier than ever. I was making millions just selling stuff on the AH. Once I bothered to level up professions it got easier. Made me wonder why I didn't start that from the beginning but everything was too expensive.

However as the months have worn on, players and activity has dropped. Selling anything on the AH is a chore due to the constant cancel scanning and massive price cuts. Orgrimmar was empty this evening when I logged on. Usually it's crazy busy and trade chat was quiet. But I've been feeling this coming since at least mid January. The Maw feels pointless, Torghast is a place no one wants to go after your first legendary since it offers nothing. WQs are a waste since you don't need them to unlock flying and now that you've completed your covenant campaign, no real reason to play unless you love raiding.

Mythics + are very unrewarding. A guildie ran 5 dungeons with no drops at the end of each. That's disheartening. Considering how long it takes to put together a Mythic + run, this makes it even worse.

Right now there is nothing for casuals. As a casual interested in PVE, if you don't do Mythics+ you have nothing to do. Similarly with PVP, if you don't do RBGs or Arena, it sucks since PVP is terribly balanced in random BGs. Most people are probably raid logging right now. For those that don't raid, you are pretty limited in what you can do.

So far it's been a terrible expansion. There is no new hook. It just feels like an extension of BFA which itself feels like a watered down extension of Legion but without all the fun parts.

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Can you explain why SL being bad retroactively makes BfA better?

I agree SL is bad, but that does not in any way make BfA better. BfA is still the worst that the game has ever been, hands down.

I wouldn't be surprised that SL takes that spot before the end of that expansion. It's already heading that way. I would have said the same thing as the poster above. BFA was bad up until then. However, it's still so much better than Shadowlands. Right now specs are terribly balanced. BM Hunters go from one of the best specs to bottom tier. Havoc DH's are nerfed into oblivion while some classes have had a hard AOE cap yet Mages, Balance Druids get an capped AOE limit.

Then you have the WQs. WQs were quick to do. You logged in, did a few WQs and moved on. Now it's just an artificial grind with multiple stages. You have to fill 2-3 bars for every WQ and it takes forever.

Mythic+ is unrewarding. I personally prefer the SL dungeons in a way compared to BFA which were just long however, you just don't get loot. Bad enough Mythics felt unrewarding when you didn't get loot, now it feels worse off.

[varren]

It was fun early on but boy is it a drag now. Anima and Torghast have completely failed as engaging content, leaving nothing for casuals to do other than hit the 200 ilvl hard cap and then move on to another toon or quit. At least in BFA and Legion you could fish for titanforge procs.

[NordWitcher]

The statment was just flat out wrong. The expansion only centers around m+ if you make it so. You can just do your 1 run a week for more chest options or you straight up go and raid mythic or do high level PvP. The later is aslo the best working gearing strategy right now.

Everyone says, "GO PVP". Yeah try PVP with shitty gear. You barely have a chance to survive with that gear. It's almost like you need gear to get better gear. You have to sit through hours and hours of being completely useless to get that gear.