Rate Shadowlands

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

I r8 8/8 gr8 b8 ion m8!

[AidanJLowe]

How many people really do this though? As a mythic raider I step my foot into normal once (first week), heroic for maybe a few weeks but then it's all mythic. As for m+ there is definitely people who spam them but in reality all you really need to do is one +14 for the week and you get something from the weekly vault. Now if you want to spam more and do 10 for the 3 options, that's a feature that will burn you out probably, but it's like an expansion of the weekly chest from Legion and BFA that just rewards you IF you choose to go for more options. Aside from a few weeks when I did 4 (when I really wanted a weapon) I've mostly stuck with 1 run weekly because that matches previous expansions.

As for Torghast I feel like people shit on it way too much for a feature that's pretty much entirely optional and can be skipped once you get your r4 legendary which takes what, 4-5 weeks of Torghast? Which honestly ain't that bad for something that takes 60 minutes a week.

Considering Anima is entirely optional, Shadowlands is probably the most casual friendly the game has been since WoD. You couldn't raid log in Legion or BFA.

Well from your run-of-the-mill player perspective who doesn't compete at the highest level with a set group of highly skilled players in Legion I used to run LFR, Normal & Heroic. Think you could do some quests in LFR / augment runes on role calls and obviously Warforged / Titanforged chance back then.

And I don't mean running M+ exclusively all day for gear, I mean working your way from expansion start through the keys starting from 2 onwards and being the only real path of sustainable PvE challenge, Mythic raids stays the same throughout the tier until nerfs same with all difficulties.

Torghast was one of the main features announced of this expansion and yes while it can be ignored if you play one spec and get the BiS legendary it still is a work-in-progress experimental feature. As seen in 9.1 patchnotes its changing but will still be the tedious mess it is, and pretty sure it's not widely popular unless you absolutely adore roguelike style games, even with the system live it doesn't vary it enough to be enjoyable and the alterations made for 9.1 aren't exactly getting people excited.

A lot of people are content with raid logging on mains/alts each week but does that really incentivize people to play do people really get fulfillment or joy from that? Once defeated you're playing a game of lottery / roll of the dice each week. People may argue playing with a group of friends makes the game fun, to a degree that is true but that same group of friends could play any other game. And yes I understand I just described the game since 2006 as well.

You could say I'm the casual regular player this type of expansion was aimed at but even playing numerous classes it's still very boring content.

[Depakote]

3.6/10.

WoD was a joke. A joke that even got its personal meme named "Will Finish Later If We Have The Funding".
SL can be considered a WFL 2.0, that for sure. Considering that the funding was never actually an issue for them even during WoD, I suppose we could just safely assume that we will not see any major improvements to the current state of gameplay.

Warlords of Draenor was the last time this game was fun for me. Legion is when all the borrowed power crap began and 'modern' wow came into existence. I don't understand how people think that that a good expansion.

[Ielenia]

Warlords of Draenor was the last time this game was fun for me. Legion is when all the borrowed power crap began and 'modern' wow came into existence. I don't understand how people think that that a good expansion.

Actually... it began on Warlords of Draenor. Remember "draenor perks"?

[Depakote]

Actually... it began on Warlords of Draenor. Remember "draenor perks"?

Not really and that's not really true either.

[Swampmoose]

5/10

Choreghast is chore.
The Maw is a hemorrhoid I can't get rid of.
Mythics are ok. Fun if you have a cool group to run with. Pugging is a kick in the sac. Too many mediocre players thinking they need MDI comps to do low level keys. Didn't get the memo I needed to be a fire mage to be able to do a +15.
Castle is ok. Too many absurdly strong classes/specs and too many that are laughed at when it comes to progression. If you're casual, no big deal. Guess this one holds true for most expansions though. Giving each class a little something rather than everything to a few is hard design work.

Whatever, I'm having some fun but there are enough issues that it's just seems like another mediocre effort from Blizzard.

[Thrif]

The fact over 50% rate it 7 or higher shows just how full this site is of Blizzard fanboys.

This poll was made half a year ago during the honeymoon phase. There has been other polls made afterwards with different results.

[Littlechamp]

Its the best game ever.
Can't wait for the classic Shadowlands.

Blizzard rule!

[arkanon]

The fact over 50% rate it 7 or higher shows just how full this site is of Blizzard fanboys.

There is another thread from a few weeks back that had a pretty sad result. Slightly more had it 4 or lower, on the same scale, with a few diehards (or possibly genuine fans i guess) giving it 9+. I dont think it was a surprise to anyone, but its not as "controversial" as this thread so its down on page 4 by now probably.

edit: Its back! and the results have changed slightly since i last looked, but still similar net result.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...(2021-version)

[Baza]

I rated it "good" when the poll came out, but now I would rate it as "bad". I lasted exactly 1 month into the expansion, by far the least amount of time of any WoW expansion. I came back recently because now I don't have any other games I want to play, but I've been mostly leveling, not doing endgame stuff.

The leveling experience in Shadowlands is terrible. While leveling toons recently I always chose MoP, and going from the beautiful zones like the Jade Forest or Valley of the Four Winds, to the Maw at level 50 feels really bad. And then you either have to choose the campaign, which is the exact same quests at the exact same order, or doing threads of fate - boring side quests, world quests, and bonus objectives. And bonus objectives can be really long - in some of them killing a mob gives 1-2%, ugh. They also give only 2 quests worth of XP, it's not even worth doing them usually. In WoD when they were introduced, they were shorter and gave tons of XP. And the zones look bland and uninteresting, Ravendreth being the worst zone ever in my opinion. Bastion is half decent, but it goes really fast - I did quests with that mechanical tiger or whatever and filled the bar in 1.5 hours, and them bam, off to the next zone. Like the dreadful Maldraxxus. World quests are also much longer, and Ion's reasoning why they are long is just dumb and out of touch.

And all these systems and borrowed power, so much work and balancing went into it, and for what? 90% choose the best option based on a guide, even if for most of them it doesn't matter. I don't like the Maw, or Torghast, and it seems that most of the other players don't like it too. I might need to do the same covenant campaign (Night Fae) on a different toon, ugh. So long and boring, I agree with Preach, this is just bad content.

The dungeons and the raid are decent, but not great. Still, it's the best part of the game, as it was in the last few expansions, Blizzard still know how to do them. But putting legendary powers on a 1st or 2nd boss is stupid, I had many runs where people joined for those, and left in the middle of the dungeon when they killed the boss who might drop it. Why not put all of them on the last boss?

[Zantera]

Well from your run-of-the-mill player perspective who doesn't compete at the highest level with a set group of highly skilled players in Legion I used to run LFR, Normal & Heroic. Think you could do some quests in LFR / augment runes on role calls and obviously Warforged / Titanforged chance back then.

And I don't mean running M+ exclusively all day for gear, I mean working your way from expansion start through the keys starting from 2 onwards and being the only real path of sustainable PvE challenge, Mythic raids stays the same throughout the tier until nerfs same with all difficulties.

Torghast was one of the main features announced of this expansion and yes while it can be ignored if you play one spec and get the BiS legendary it still is a work-in-progress experimental feature. As seen in 9.1 patchnotes its changing but will still be the tedious mess it is, and pretty sure it's not widely popular unless you absolutely adore roguelike style games, even with the system live it doesn't vary it enough to be enjoyable and the alterations made for 9.1 aren't exactly getting people excited.

A lot of people are content with raid logging on mains/alts each week but does that really incentivize people to play do people really get fulfillment or joy from that? Once defeated you're playing a game of lottery / roll of the dice each week. People may argue playing with a group of friends makes the game fun, to a degree that is true but that same group of friends could play any other game. And yes I understand I just described the game since 2006 as well.

You could say I'm the casual regular player this type of expansion was aimed at but even playing numerous classes it's still very boring content.

I think Legion was probably overload for burning out with titanforging being at its craziest and also how obtaining legendaries worked. There was a reason to do LFR/Normal/HC/Mythic and I definitely see your point.

Since the removal of TF and the way gearing is in SL I would say it deflates that 'having to raid multiple difficulties' thing. Even as a casual player I would argue LFR is a complete waste of anyone's time considering you get about equal gear from m0s (and compare the time of running that to LFR vs the chance of getting something) so all you are stuck with as a casual is Normal and HC pretty much.

I can see people not liking the idea of m+ being the same dungeons through the whole expansion but personally I prefer it over the old way of dungeons being basically useless after 2 weeks and you were just forced to do them for 'daily HC' when you just blasted through it. For Torghast I think I'm probably in that group who doesn't really mind it (I don't love it or hate it) but I do agree some small changes would improve it quite a bit.

[Boddhi]

I like it. I like how my main char main spec (actually i always play only one char and one spec) plays out, the zones are beautiful (lacking some detail though but given the circumstances it's OK), the music is nice, Dungeons and Raids are same quality as always, apart from gearing up i got an appealing carrot on the stick (covenant transmog) that gives me a reason to do my daily ingame routine, it's just Word of Warcraft in the used to and expected shape. I think when you overall like that game, you also like this expansion. Has nothing to do with fanboy. What did Ion say? "You click things, you smash things in the face"... That's what it always was and still is. It fills my life at times when there is nothing better goin on, and i am glad to have it for this reason.


8/10

[kamuimac]

1/10

horrible overtuned boring desperate push into e-sports

another failed expansion catering only to toxic nolifers

i am happy though -SL shown me there is no hope for wow so switchedfull time to FF14 this expansion and dont plan to come back ever.

wow lost its soul and untill they stop catering game only to toxic nolifers there is no point returnign.

failed game made by failed game director that should have been fire years ago

[Boddhi]

1/10

horrible overtuned boring desperate push into e-sports

another failed expansion catering only to toxic nolifers

i am happy though -SL shown me there is no hope for wow so switchedfull time to FF14 this expansion and dont plan to come back ever.

wow lost its soul and untill they stop catering game only to toxic nolifers there is no point returnign.

failed game made by failed game director that should have been fire years ago

You post a quite lot quite negative stuff in a forum about a game that you state to have left already. Wonder who is the toxic nolifer here . Consider checking this out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection for some self realization maybe.

[crusadernero]

Meh, it was allright the first few months - as most xpacs have been. It quickly faded off into nothing though.

The game at max level is shallow and quite boring. The raid is uninteresting. The SL story is OKish, but theres to little. I wish we had gotten alot more of quests/zones at launch. I also dislike that SL doesnt really feel at home with Warcraft, but thats probably just me.

[Ielenia]

Not really and that's not really true either.

Yes, really and that is true. "Draenor Perks" were the beginning of that. No powers for our classes, and then given "draenor perks" which went away once the expansion was over.

[Depakote]

Yes, really and that is true. "Draenor Perks" were the beginning of that. No powers for our classes, and then given "draenor perks" which went away once the expansion was over.

That's a lie. Legion actually took things from classes' rotation and locked them behind that idiotic artifact weapon grind which you had to do for every spec. Draenor perks just made already existing abilities better and when WoD was over they baked those perks into the abilities that already existed. When Legion was over the artifact weapon was destroyed and only some classes got some abilities from the artifact put into their class but they replaced already existing talents or abilities.

[Puremallace]

22 Pages worth of data that Blizzard could use if they cared to understand how player opinion changes over the course of an expansion from a highly rate launch to just garbage as the realization of the extent of the systems RNG start to impact the casual player base.

[Ielenia]

That's a lie. Legion actually took things from classes' rotation and locked them behind that idiotic artifact weapon grind which you had to do for every spec. Draenor perks just made already existing abilities better and when WoD was over they baked those perks into the abilities that already existed. When Legion was over the artifact weapon was destroyed and only some classes got some abilities from the artifact put into their class but they replaced already existing talents or abilities.

It's not a lie.

And many of the Draenor perks were simply removed from the game, post-WoD. Only some of them were baked into the classes. The Draenor Perks were clearly the beginning of the "borrowed power" system.

[ashblond]

Strong start but the honeymoon face quickly went away and it just became very boring very fast.

So i say it was a 8 or 9 at release but now i would give it a 4 max.

I made this post back in December and gave it 5/10 rating. Today, I still rate it 5/10.

To be honest, I don't understand why players rated it high during honeymoon period. It felt like something new wow players will do.

But for me, and many other veteran players, it was very clear that SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0.

It is just another expansion heavily focused on borrowed power and farming, without major new things.

I still hold my view in the original post "When players did it 1st time in Legion, it was great. When we repeated it again in BFA, it was bad. When we have it 3rd time in a row, it will end worse."

The biggest problem of today's wow is lacking of innovation.