Shadowlands could be amazing if...

[cparle87]

Well they definitely failed the "randomized" part. Since it feels like its the same quests every single day. But yeh world quests fail in that they don't feel like you are advancing a campaign. Its just playing whack a mole on a map with a daily timer. World quests are more convenient i guess, but they miss the role-playing aspect of getting assigned a mission to advance a cause.

People complained about too many world quests in Legion and Blizzard listened. Look at a Legion zone and count the number of quests. Then look at a BFA zone. They tried making fewer total quests but upping the rewards slightly, but that leads to the problem you mentioned. Each area only has like 1-3 possible quests for it. It comes to the point where you go to an area and know without looking what the quest is going to be.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah pretty much this. As much as I dig the setting, it's not Warcraft. And then all the other stuff on top of it...

Good God, didn't you guys get this "it's not Warcraft" bullshit out of your system in MoP? Who are you to say something doesn't belong in a franchise as kitchen sink as this. We had the afterlife, undead, and aliens from day one.

[craigw]

The actual zones really are terrible, imo, after the first pass. Travel is really bad as well

Also why are only 50% of the dungeons available for leveling, for alt players this is maybe the worst of it. Sweet Jesus I am sick of those 4 dungeons.

yep. those dungeons were fun when i leveled my first alt. pulling fucking huge. it was real fun. but damn those 4 dungeons got old real fast. i tend to avoid them as well doing keys. i will do a mists tho. easy 14/15 for vault. but fuck man ive had enough of them already, and we got 2 more tiers to go.

[Alroxas]

corruptions were also fun

By fun you mean broken. How fun is it in PvP when you get 1 shot from X player because they stacked corruptions to 1-shot you? How fun is PvE when raid bosses require super precision because corruption gives so much player power that in order to be "dangerous" raid encounters have to be able to 1-shot players?

I agree. Raid should be the paramount.

Congrats, you just alienated all the PvP and M+ people. Also pet battling players and transmog players are upset that their wants/needs aren't being addressed either.

If Blizzard figured out an alternative path at end-game besides the main three of Raid/M+/PvP.

So I can now pet battle myself to mythic nathria levels?

Nathria looks cool.. but it's so same-samey. Every boss room just looks the same. There's no clashing and contrasting themes, it's missing a lot.

The dungeons are a massive letdown. Some of the fights are cool, but most of the dungeons are questing areas you've quested through. Nothing unique.

Uh what? Sludgefist/Shriekwing room doesn't look like Council room which doesn't look like Denathrius' two rooms that you fight him in.

With dungeons, by your arguments, Legion/BFA dungeons would also be bad. Legion's Court of Stars? Pfft, quested through that area despite Court having some unique buffs/interactions based on what classes and professions you bring. Or BFA's Mechagon: Junkyard M+ is just the outdoor areas of Mechagon which is also "boring" then.

And as for uniqueness, with a 15 year old game, it is very rare to come up with "new" mechanics that haven't been done before or aren't a rehash of older ideas.

For instance, we're getting the safety dance again in 9.1 raid... Granted the seals on Fatescribe fight is both old and new. We had runes in a boss fight as recently as Trial of Valor (Legion raid) but runes moving either clockwise/counter-clockwise is a new twist.

[TidalConflux]

So I can now pet battle myself to mythic nathria levels?

No, but what i mean is a fourth alternative in battle content. Like how Visions offered a piece of gear per week based upon clears.

Actually we have 5: 5 man PVE content, 10-30 (20 for hardcore) PVE content, 2v2 PVP arena, 3v3 PVP arena, 10v10 PVP battleground.

Extending PvP out to the different iterations of PvP doesnt expand upon gear pathing paths. Its 3 paths.

What that 'alternative path' for MMO game should be? Fishing? World quests? You can't give best gear through solo content, there is no need to coordinate here, it would have to be ridicolously hard, harder than Mage Tower during 7.2 (before Tomb opened).

I mean you could put in something here for either:
1) Make World Quests actually worth doing again
2) Make a system like Visions with one piece per week depending upon clear
3) Give something to professions

Theres an argument for all of these -- I still like how people just jump to non-battle content to try and make the person suggesting seem dumb, its such a dishonest tactic.

[sil3ntearth]

...they focused on the stuff they do really well and stopped trying to reinvent the wheel with crap nobody asked for or wants.

[Dracullus]

Extending PvP out to the different iterations of PvP doesnt expand upon gear pathing paths. Its 3 paths.

Even if it doesn't cost Blizzard much, these are 3 separate PVP paths and you can choose one and ignore rest - although picking more than one doesn't speed up your progression (even slow it down, cause you don't push one rating) like doing both PVP and raids/M+ or only raids and M+.

...they focused on the stuff they do really well and stopped trying to reinvent the wheel with crap nobody asked for or wants.

Of course, of course, I hear many comments like this, but when Blizzard revealed WoD and SL without informations about new power systems or side content, they were shit on that "new expansion has no content". Playerbase ignore new dungeons/raids/zones and thinks good instances/questing or great art are a given, when they require both time and hard work. Playerbase on forums just want new shiny stuff.

[Nyel]

Good God, didn't you guys get this "it's not Warcraft" bullshit out of your system in MoP? Who are you to say something doesn't belong in a franchise as kitchen sink as this. We had the afterlife, undead, and aliens from day one.

MoP was 100% Warcraft though. It just wasn't very popular back then. Shadowlands is 99% made up and connecting lose ends just to connect them. Shadowlands feels not like Warcraft, there's a reason why so many people think that. The entire afterlives stuff itself is very neat, but there are so so so so many logical flaws and storytelling issues that it makes zero sense for the Warcraft universe.

[msdos]

Most of the grinds don't equate to power growth = you don't do them = there's no content = Raiding and PVP only = gated behind IO, achievements, MMR, score, experience, this, that, your BMI, your credit score, etc, etc, = just boost = the game is now boosters boosting future boosters.

I don't see any deviation from this path other than you decide you want to farm Anima or "farm" mounts (not really farming, it's really just mindlessly dragging your ugly character through 10 year old raids to gamble).

"But WoW has always been PVP, raid or die"
I disagree because of the outdoor world shenanigans that went on in early WoW. But even if WoW was always "raid or die", you could atleast have alts without barriers. Good luck having an alt the past 3 expansions lol, they don't make it easier, I wonder why?

[Pakheth]

There’s way more content in the zones than you think there is. It’s just all made weirdly pointless and since very little of it sticks together in any way it makes it feel empty.

For example, there’s plenty of world quests, but since they are randomized every day and don’t have any kind of crafted experience, they feel significantly less substantive than any daily hub in BC or Wrath did. In older expansions, you’d go to an area, grab your quests, and then do them all. It would take a little time and you would be doing a few things at once. At certain points, you’d unlock more quests and the experience would change. World quests are more plentiful by any metric, but they aren’t stuck together, don’t have any coherence, and don’t feel like part of something you are working toward.

Thank you for summing up why I find the current iteration of world quest to be dull.
At least in Legion the WQs were so plentiful you could easily spend a long time in one zone but now there are probably just 1-2 or you want to do and then you leave the zone for the day waiting for more and sadly a lot of those quests are the same 5 on repeat but somehow feel more tedious than dailies did? I don't know, it's hard to pinpoint why they feel more like a chore.

[Bibarel]

Don't know about amazing, but SL definitely could have been quite good/much better than it is now. Remove the player power from covenants, make covenant collecting less grindy, keep the promise of alt progeression while levelling (not just 4 quests awarding 1 renown each), add long-requested maw intro and covenant campaign skips, fix the loot, bring back flight whistle, remove soul ash from Torghast and make the tower what it actually should be - fun and crazy experience with purely cosmetic rewards - these things would have made the game much better for me.

I can't comment much on world content, since I've never really enjoyed it in any of the expansions (been playing since 2009) and SL is no exception. Although Maw is probably the new low in that department, and the fact that it is optional does not redeem it in any way.

[Daffan]

This is just my personal opinion, but I feel like Shadowlands had the potential to be amazing. Terrible time gating, zones and characters i couldn't give a shit less about, and awful drop percentages has really taken away its shine. That being said, i absolutely love the new dungeons and raiding. Some new and inventive boss fights, along with Castle Nathria's excellent design and music made for some of the most memorable fights i'd taken place in in a long time. Hopefully they get the shit closer to right with the next patch onward.

The time gating is a necessity when the game has no other holds. Nobody cares about raiding or gearing anymore (casuals that is)

[Kalisandra]

The actual zones really are terrible, imo, after the first pass. Travel is really bad as well

Also why are only 50% of the dungeons available for leveling, for alt players this is maybe the worst of it. Sweet Jesus I am sick of those 4 dungeons.

O hell yes! Levelling via dungeons is fast and efficient, but it is soooo boring!

[Dzonathan]

Personally I'd be happy if we made a return to deterministic gear progression.

If blizz wants me to do DoS 100 times before I get my BiS tank trinket then just put a Loa mask NPC named "Reclaimer of Artifacts" who sells it for 100 mythic tokens that only drop from last boss when the mythic key is timed.

Both parties are happy:
Blizz is happy because it keeps me on the gear threadmill
I am happy because gear progression is deterministic

No need for those embarrassing Travis Day GDC speeches.

[Kalisandra]

For example, there’s plenty of world quests, but since they are randomized every day and don’t have any kind of crafted experience, they feel significantly less substantive than any daily hub in BC or Wrath did. In older expansions, you’d go to an area, grab your quests, and then do them all. It would take a little time and you would be doing a few things at once. At certain points, you’d unlock more quests and the experience would change. World quests are more plentiful by any metric, but they aren’t stuck together, don’t have any coherence, and don’t feel like part of something you are working toward.

In SL, unlike Legion or BfA, there are few world quests, so there's little choice in what you do. We're told that they made them take longer, but made fewer of them because players were spending too long travelling between them compared to actually doing stuff. Well, maybe they should've told the people who designed the transport systems in SL that, because travel is slower than at any time in Legion or BfA, making the slower WQs just make the whole process really painful. Also, reducing the required number of WQs to three doesn't compensate for the longer times, so it's slower overall (not to mention the 'fill the bar' callings taking more than that).

And about the transport system - I remeber the devs saying, during the beta, that they took the flight whistle away because the covenant transport systems would make it unnecessary. Well, the transport system takes a bit of work to power up, and is nowhere near as useful as the whistle (and in some zones in SL the whistle would be of reduced use because of the poor flight point number and placement). On top of that, only around a quarter of the WQs are in your 'home zone' so most of the time the transport net is useless anyway.

So we have few WQs to choose from, and long boring trips between them. That makes much of the daily chores one does a real grind while at the same time really unengaging. As Preach said (roughly), the game seems designed with the notion that you'll be tabbed out half the time, and splitting your attention between the game and the TV the other half. That's a terrible mistake in game design - it's admitting that your game is boring, and it means that it's very easy to take the next step and just not log on.

A further example of poor design, this time where they seem to have decided to force engagement - getting to the world bosses and some of the 'group dailies'. Having to plough through masses of densely packed hostile mobs just to get to the quest area is all kinds of annoying. It's exceptionally rough on new players and poorly geared alts as well. While it forces attention, it's hardly great gameplay or game design.

This brings up yet another problem with SL, though this also applies to BfA and parts of Legion, and started WoD, possibly earlier. That's high mob density. There are a huge number of area in recent expansions where you simply cannot (unless able to stealth) move through them without pulling mobs, often many mobs. In older expansions these sorts of areas were much less common, and usually if you couldn't avoid pulling it would be only a few mobs and by careful timing (rewarding player skill and knowledge of the areas) you could pull and kill those couple without pulling anything else, or just pull them, and dodge everything else whilst running and then let them rubber-band and reset. These days we have massive mob density, and yet Blizzard can't understand why so many players hate them for not allowing flight for months after we hit the level cap.

[Raven]

If Blizzard stopped listening to players and finally accept that there are way to many diffrent ways players like to play the game and players will have so diffrent opinions on whats fun.

They should just go back to make the game they want to play and stop trying to figure out what the players wants since its impossible to make everyone happy.

That was a big part of why vanilla Wow was so great, Blizzard created a game they wanted to play, and if others wanted to play also it was a bonus.

[Dracullus]

The time gating is a necessity when the game has no other holds. Nobody cares about raiding or gearing anymore (casuals that is)

Time gating exist cause there is no grind. Imo power grind is "you think you don't but you do" thing for large portion of community. It's clear when you compare reactions to Legion and SL launch.

It's also clear "just gear" is not savior of WoW like it was described by yt celebrities and there is no amazing feeling when you get bis item. Most people had it in the past just because WoW was fresh game for them. Titanforging had flaws, but it gave a reason for people to do easier content.

[Smeller]

Shadowlands already has the feel of an expansion that released its last patch. I don't know what they were thinking when taking ages for 9.1. Don't get me wrong I liked Shadowlands on release and I actually played it a lot but we would've waited more than 6 months on the 23rd of May for the next content patch.

[uopayroll]

If the pattern holds, Shadowlands will be amazing about a month into the next expansion when it becomes the new "shit" expansion and all past ones are looked back upon with fondness.

[Lahis]

The actual zones really are terrible, imo, after the first pass. Travel is really bad as well

Also why are only 50% of the dungeons available for leveling, for alt players this is maybe the worst of it. Sweet Jesus I am sick of those 4 dungeons.

Well BFA had less than 50% dungeons for levelling

[Kalisandra]

Well BFA had less than 50% dungeons for levelling

And people complained about it then, too.