Rate Shadowlands (2021 version)

[struny]

Just recently started playing for the first time in a few years, its not bad.

[Lolites]

Horrible. If you don't do premade group content there is nothing to do in the game.

yes, if you dont play the game there is nothing to do in the game...
its an mmo, premade content was ALWAYS the core of the game...

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the shift in rating shows one thing - before or now, people didnt rate objectively at all, they rate how they currently enjoy the game...
the content didnt get worse than it was few months ago, but now, due to being done with content, they give lower rating
so as usual, rating by players is pretty much useless as it doesnt depend on the game but rather on their whims

[froschhure]

people hating bfa, i will never understand them

[Nemah]

Camp "ok." It fits my life better at the moment than other expansions (and my desired activities in them, like mythic raiding let's say).

[Wangming]

people hating bfa, i will never understand them

Well I never understand people who like BfA. Drustvar was amazing. Easily my favorite zone in WoW. Everything else? Garbage.

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the shift in rating shows one thing - before or now, people didnt rate objectively at all, they rate how they currently enjoy the game...
the content didnt get worse than it was few months ago, but now, due to being done with content, they give lower rating
so as usual, rating by players is pretty much useless as it doesnt depend on the game but rather on their whims

That's the problem, Kupo. They are done with the content. There is no new content not even on the PTR. And that is something that haven't really occured yet.

[LemonDemonGirl]

3/10

Only thing(s) I like about it are the fact that Bwonsamdi and Mueh'zala are in it. Other than that? I hate it. I hate the crowded zones, the stupid flightpath design, and most of the dungeons. I hate to say it, but I think BFA was making me enjoy the game more. Ah well, I can play Classic if I want, and just log in to RP on Retail

[TheFirstOnes]

5/10. Meh asf.

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Believe it or not, I still am having more fun with this expac than BFA.

Guess how bad BFA's leveling was. Guess. IT WAS SO BAD, I BOOSTED!!! EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

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I. never. boost. ON. MY. FUCKING. MAIN!!!!!!!

[Schmilblick]

Bad, stopped after 2 months.

[Deadite]

Pretty good fun for the first month but now i have to move down to a 4. Everything seems poitless now. Max renown so don't have to do WQ's anymore. Only did the 1000 anima and callings for renown. Got the rep and mounts for Maw/Torgash and am capped at at 100 souls so don't need go there anymore. Yipee for not having to visit that garbage zone and content again. PvP at 200ilvl = dead before you can push your trinket key so that is out the window due to frustration. LFR and Heroic dungeons were rendered irrelevant ages ago when you could get 197 covenant gear.

This is just not an expansion for the queuers yet again. Gonna tap out till the 9.1

[Chilela]

Rather than attempt a numerical rating system, I may as well just go over the good, the bad, and the ugly:

THE GOOD:
+ The increased flexibility in leveling zones, between Chromie Time and the Shadowlands alt system. Definitely a well-overdue change.
+ Anima feels less mandatory than Azerite. Azerite was pretty much critical to character progression, whereas 99% of Anima goes into cosmetics than anything else.
+ Callings feel like a step up from Emissaries, between their higher degree of variance, guaranteed money reward, and occasional overlap, which is a nice, albeit small, change.
+ Adventures feel like a step up from the BFA table system. I'd say they're fairly similar in quality to Legion's table system, which was probably the best iteration of the mission tables before this xpac hit.
+ CN is probably the best opening raid the game's seen in several xpacs. Full disclosure: I've only ever seen Shriekwing on Mythic.
+ The Great Vault is a huge upgrade from the M+ cache. PvP being a viable gearing method and Valor being added to buff M+ for gearing are also positives. Also, PVP VENDORS ARE BACK, FINALLY
+ Crafting professions are actually somewhat worthwhile again, thanks to the legendary system.

THE BAD:
- The plot took a step backwards. Despite some pretty great moments (e.g. the interactions between Anduin and Sylvanas), somethings just feels "off" about the writing on a macro level. I can't even pin it on unfamiliarity, MoP had some of the strongest writing of any xpac to date.
- Covenant balance is pretty out of whack. It's been at least somewhat resolved, but it's still a clearly lingering issue. I'm still putting money on them making Covenant abilities swappable like talents later in the xpac, and having covenant choice be purely cosmetic.
- Systems. Holy moly, there's an unnecessary amount of them. You have Soul Ash for legendaries, covenants, renown for said covenants, soulbinds, conduits, the list goes on. Somehow it's even more convoluted than the end of BFA was.
- The Maw. While the bad parts of it don't really affect me as a Druid, you'd think Blizzard would have learned not to cripple the ability of players to move, given how much of a controversy flying has been since WoD. On the upside, I enjoy the area from a thematic standpoint.

THE UGLY:
-- As I could have guessed, Torghast became pretty repetitive after a few months. You can only randomize stuff so much. It's not the worst thing to run, but the fact that it's effectively mandatory due to lack of other methods of acquiring Soul Ash was a terrible, terrible idea. That, and Soul Ash being the only real reward from it, outside of a handful of Twisting Corridors rewards. At least IEs had a solid variety of item rewards.
-- The sluggishness of content patches. I'm presuming real-world issues are the cause of this, but we're 5 months into the expansion, and we have no word on when a PTR is going to even hit, much less a date on 9.1. I would have realistically expected the patch to hit late April/early May when the xpac originally hit, but it's looking like mid-May might be a stretch, and we may be looking at a late May/early June release date.

Overall, I'd say SL has been "Okay" so far. If I didn't have a great group of people to play with, I'm not sure I'd still be subbed. Plenty of cheaper alternatives out there.

[Stormspark]

Rated it bad. For comparison, I would rate BFA ok, and WOD horrible. Legion, WOTLK, and BC would be excellent, Cata and MOP would be good.

SL is not massively worse than BFA, but it is worse. BFA wasn't *that* bad...it actually had a lot of good points, just an absolutely terrible grindy gearing system and a MUCH more tedious AP grind than Legion. SL has all of BFA's problems, with none of the zones or stories that were interesting in BFA. Also, BFA at least had rewarding world quests, SL does not. I DO agree that BFA was a MASSIVE drop from Legion though, so at the time it did seem pretty bad. SL is not as much worse compared to BFA, as BFA was compared to Legion.

For SL, they took all of the interesting stuff out, leaving ONLY the chores. There is just as much of a grind as there was in BFA...there is just NO reward at all this time. It's possible that SL could improve in the future (just as BFA improved), but "bad" is where things stand right now. Right now SL can only say it's better than WOD. (FWIW, WOD had a LOT of potential, and if it had received updates the way BFA did, it would've been good by the end...they just cancelled it after 1 patch.)

[Gimlix]

Rated it 7-8 in the last poll. Now 3-4, my subscription ended in January as I did all of the content in Shadowlands. Never looked back one day since then as there’s simply nothing exciting at the moment. And with the very late 9.1 I don’t have a reason to come back for at least another 2 months.

Shadowlands had a very good start and was very good in the first weeks, way better than BfA or WoD in my opinion. But it became tedious and boring very quickly and now it just exists.

No it doesn't and imagine spending time on a WoW site when u dont even play it. I smell lies.

[Zantera]

I'd say good but we're only in the first tier so it's early days. It definitely has a better first tier than Wotlk (re-hashed Naxx), Legion (EN wasn't that great and legendaries were problematic at that time), Cata (didn't quite get into the first few raids) but it's not really up there among the best either.

[Nyel]

No it doesn't and imagine spending time on a WoW site when u dont even play it. I smell lies.

Check this poll. More people rate it Bad than Good. And somehow they managed to visit this site and participate in the poll...

[Lolites]

That's the problem, Kupo. They are done with the content. There is no new content not even on the PTR. And that is something that haven't really occured yet.

sure, it sucks that there is no new content yet, BUT that doesnt make the content that is there worse, so the rating should be the same if viewed objectively...
game doesnt magicaly get worse bcs you finish it, same as book or movie or anything...

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Rated it 7-8 in the last poll. Now 3-4, my subscription ended in January as I did all of the content in Shadowlands.

so the content thats in game got worse bcs you finished it... interesting point of view, totaly fair rating...

[Nobleshield]

Horrible for me, but ever since Legion I feel the game isn't Warcraft. Legion turned the game much closer to Diablo than WoW, and they need to go back and undo all of that garbage.

[Denso]

Mythic Plus: Bad gearing system, worst pool of instances (by a length) for a M+ expansion so far, affix not too inspiring.
PvP: Great gearing system, still balance issues five months in, ladder plagued by boosters.
Raid: Above average tier. Some decent fights. Only really did half of mythic, but I don't really enjoy just raidlogging, so I quit.

Covenants: Yuck. The concept of grinding renown and having to do lengthy (repeat) questlines on main/alt characters is unappealing.
Maw: Needs account wide sockets/conduits. Doing the grind once should be enough. Absolute shambolic content.

I still rate covenant grind above maw grind because thankfully it's not time gated. Maw is just awful in every sense.

One of the reason a lot of players are "done with content" is alt unfriendliness, of which Shadowlands has an abundance.

3/10

[Nerovar]

sure, it sucks that there is no new content yet, BUT that doesnt make the content that is there worse, so the rating should be the same if viewed objectively...
game doesnt magicaly get worse bcs you finish it, same as book or movie or anything...

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so the content thats in game got worse bcs you finished it... interesting point of view, totaly fair rating...

I guess you could argue MMORPGs should provide more replayability than a linear singleplayer experience that you can "finish" once and never touch again. Long term success of MMORPGs is usually defined by and reliant on their player retention. Ideally, there should be enough "content" (I don't really like using that word) to keep players interested in the game until the next bigger patch arrives. You don't really want people to sub for a month or two, play all the "content" they're interested in and then unsub until the next "content" drop comes. If your MMORPG isn't enjoyable without constant injections of flashy new stuff then there's probably something rotten at a fundamental mechanical level. Because it's not just about content, it's also about how the game utilizes that content to keep you entertained for long periods of time.

[Nerovar]

Good attempt to validate that guy who said 50% of people think it is "bad or below". https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ic-on-purpouse

Let's see how this one goes..and where people fit the "ok" option in.

-does it count towards good and better?
-does it count towards bad and worse?
-does it not count at all, because it is just...ok?

This sounds really paranoid and I honestly don't really know what you're talking about but ok?

I don't really care if people use these polls to justify their personal vendetta against the game and I don't really see why you should care either. Blizzard doesn't really need you to defend their game on third party websites. I'm just interested in how the numbers have shifted after a few months.

[Lolites]

I guess you could argue MMORPGs should provide more replayability than a linear singleplayer experience that you can "finish" once and never touch again. Long term success of MMORPGs is usually defined by and reliant on their player retention. Ideally, there should be enough "content" (I don't really like using that word) to keep players interested in the game until the next bigger patch arrives. You don't really want people to sub for a month or two, play all the "content" they're interested in and then unsub until the next "content" drop comes. If your MMORPG isn't enjoyable without constant injections of flashy new stuff then there's probably something rotten at a fundamental mechanical level. Because it's not just about content, it's also about how the game utilizes that content to keep you entertained for long periods of time.

you mean like raids, m+, pvp, anima grind for cosmetics? or did that too somehow get worse in last few months?
actualy there were some improvements to M+ and anima so no, those things did not get worse, why should the rating be decreased?
sure, if you dont enjoy those things its fair to give it low rating, but if you dont enjoy them now how come you enjoyed them few months ago, its literaly the same... so no, giving worse rating than few months ago doesnt show game got worse but people are biased as hell and rate their current enjoyment, not the game itself, which to be fair is pretty shitty way of doing things...

think back into history, what did wotlk have to keep people playing? ulduar patch - after you were done with raid there was few dailies and thats it, ICC patch likewise, there were dungeons too but if youve been done with raid you didnt want to run those either...
that mean wotlk too except of first few months in each patch sucked, right? if not, its a bit hypocritical to say shadowlands now is worse it was at release...