Shadowlands has the least content of any expansion yet

[cparle87]

No. WoD had no content besides raids and apexis dailies - which no one liked. Sure, at the start you could do Ashran, which no one liked either. And I suppose you could do garrision invasions too - which no one liked.

Pet tamer in each zone. 3 rares in Highmaul who dropped resources and pets. 1-2 rares in each zone that dropped mounts. Rukhmar weekly for mount. Tanaan had over a dozen pet challenges, 4 rares that drop toys, 4 rares that mounts, and a rep to grind for more mounts/toys. Then there's keeping your garrison stocked like lumber or leather/fur. Doing apexis dailies for pets/mounts/toys/to trigger the assaults for more pets/mounts/toys. Random heroic for gold and resources. Mythic dungeons once a week.

The only way anyone can say that WoD didn't have content is to either be a liar or someone with special mental gymnastics who selectively ignore everything they don't like as somehow not existing.

[Toybox]

Pet tamer in each zone. 3 rares in Highmaul who dropped resources and pets. 1-2 rares in each zone that dropped mounts. Rukhmar weekly for mount. Tanaan had over a dozen pet challenges, 4 rares that drop toys, 4 rares that mounts, and a rep to grind for more mounts/toys. Then there's keeping your garrison stocked like lumber or leather/fur. Doing apexis dailies for pets/mounts/toys/to trigger the assaults for more pets/mounts/toys. Random heroic for gold and resources. Mythic dungeons once a week.

The only way anyone can say that WoD didn't have content is to either be a liar or someone with special mental gymnastics who selectively ignore everything they don't like as somehow not existing.

No content is obviously hyperbole, but compared to the expansions either side of it, WoD was certainly lacking in things to do.

Shadowlands ending in 9.2 puts it in a similar position - 2 content patches & a total of 3 raids throughout an expansion really is a poor return when compared with anything besides WoD.

People don't wanna believe it, but Blizzard is simply not investing the same amount of resources in WoW nowadays as they did in the past, and in an MMO game this is far more noticeable than any other genre.

Even I don't wanna believe in it, but this only could be untrue if the next expansion 10.0 is really HUGE, think 10 zones, 3 raids, and 12 dungeons on launch.

We can only hope!

Legion might also be a product of WoD being called a lost cause early, giving them more time to develop it. If memory serves, they always said they were ahead of where they needed to be in terms of content development throughout Legion, which might also explain why BfA, for all its flaws, did have quite a lot of content all things considered.

That's a whole lot of mights & maybes, but glass half full n all that

[Lora]

Greetings!

I know this will be unpopular since a lot of us are still in the honeymoon phase of a new expansion but ... out of all the expansions Shadowlands has the least launch date content yet.

Why? Even when not rushing but just considering the numbers I am out of things after 16 hours of playtime on level 60. Taking in another 12 hours of leveling that's about 25 hours of initial content that I have experienced on one character before I reach all the timegating limits. This is including the mythic dungeons, gearing up, torghast, all the campaign quests leading up to the limit, quite a few world quests and a bit pvp.

I remember having 26 hours on level 120 with BFA when I ran out of things before the timegating set in, legion was even bigger with over 40 hours (played a full week on level 110 before end of things).

I know what you might say now - play another character to experience another covenant, or it's your own fault because you rushed. Yes I rushed with three full days gaming but just looking at the numbers we have around 25 hours of content with Shadowlands that is kind of fresh before you reach the end. That is lame.

Seriously that is not much playtime for a 40 Euro expansion. We're talking about initial content here not the timegating content that sets in week after week and forces you to subscribe longer and longer which in return costs you money again. And even those 25 hours where stretched wherever possible with no mounts in the Maw, scarce flight points, no flight whistle etc.

I am bit disappointed at the moment - sure the dungeons are fun, the raiding will be fun but content wise? It's a bummer when also considering that a lot of content is used assets like Maldraxxus or Ardenweald.

Happy to hear your side of things or did I miss something?

Stay civil!

Best wishes

lol not even remotely true.

[FelPlague]

Not true, wod had far less content.
Shadowlands actually has a fair bit of content.
First ever expansion to have a new zone in the .1 patch, and at the same time is getting ANOTHER new zone in the .2 patch.
we are also getting 2 new arenas aswell, ontop of the 1 we already got. that is pretty big.

the fact literally anyone ever would say shadowlands has less content then WARLORDS OF DRAENOR is proof enough people have gone fully delusional.

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No content is obviously hyperbole, but compared to the expansions either side of it, WoD was certainly lacking in things to do.

Shadowlands ending in 9.2 puts it in a similar position - 2 content patches & a total of 3 raids throughout an expansion really is a poor return when compared with anything besides WoD.



Legion might also be a product of WoD being called a lost cause early, giving them more time to develop it. If memory serves, they always said they were ahead of where they needed to be in terms of content development throughout Legion, which might also explain why BfA, for all its flaws, did have quite a lot of content all things considered.

That's a whole lot of mights & maybes, but glass half full n all that

wod had 1 .x patch, literally 6.1 was not a major patch, and blizzard regrets setting it as such, it had literally nothing other then a couple quests.

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WoD may have been sparse on content, but whatever little content it had was actually entertaining and rewarding..

yes, the garrison, shipyard, and ashran were so entertaining, you are 100% right.
/s

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It is going to have twice as many full raids as SL plus half

what? legion had 5 raids, 1 of them being only 3 bosses...
shadowlands has 3 raids so far.
how is 5 "twice as many plus half"

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Yep.

I linked the people in that particular cirkle-jerk the patchnotes for 6.1, and they still maintained that it had more work on it than 8.3 "because 8.3 used so many recycled assets"...

One cannot fathom the idiocy.

just wait till these people hear about patch 2.2.
wanna know what the logo they used for the patch was, the big NEW CONTENT!

No it wanst this

no not this either

it was this. this was the official btw.

[Toybox]

wod had 1 .x patch, literally 6.1 was not a major patch, and blizzard regrets setting it as such, it had literally nothing other then a couple quests.

Fair point. To be honest, the content that sells expansions for me is the dungeon & raid content, so with both expansions ending after just 3 raids there's not really much in it. However Shadowlands does have the content lead between the pair - Shame it's far behind everything else over the past decade or so. I thought it was an expansion with a lot of promise, but the gaps between patches has been a real killer.

[Aedruid]

There's a lot of repeatable content and sometimes boring collectable stuff to do, but Shadowlands lacks a good RPG experience, it's way too short and also gets timegated + you have to buy the books to really get the good lore. I love the lore in the books and I really wish it were in the game...

I typically sub when there's a new raid, but I can't play the same stuff over and over again for almost 1 year. I just don't have the willpower. Usually I last 2-3 months (depending on how much I push into Mythic). Back in the day, I could play WotLK, Cata, Pandaland, and etc all day everyday. Idk; either the content is different or my expectations are getting higher as I get older.

[Lolites]

There's a lot of repeatable content and sometimes boring collectable stuff to do, but Shadowlands lacks a good RPG experience, it's way too short and also gets timegated + you have to buy the books to really get the good lore. I love the lore in the books and I really wish it were in the game...

I typically sub when there's a new raid, but I can't play the same stuff over and over again for almost 1 year. I just don't have the willpower. Usually I last 2-3 months (depending on how much I push into Mythic). Back in the day, I could play WotLK, Cata, Pandaland, and etc all day everyday. Idk; either the content is different or my expectations are getting higher as I get older.

back in wrath, outside of raids and pvp, which are both ingame now, the only "endgame" was shitload of daily quests, so if you dont like repeatable content but played daily in wrath, its almost certainly "you" issue

[terminaltrip421]

"a dozen hours" and people are finished with the content. Now...you get to keep PAYING for a content drought for what USED to be around 5 months or so per patch (until the final patch which is 9-14 months long). SL's is even worse. Longer waits with less content and BAD content at that.
If people are waiting around for 10.0 to change anything for this game...get ready to be disappointed. Just like you were in BFA and just like you are in SL's.

WoW is on life support. And it isn't going to get off. Also blizzard employee's attacking paying customers shows that they don't deserve our money anyway.

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Yeah, I liked BfA better then SL's. Know how I know? As much problems as BfA had...I didn't quit. SL's got me to quit, to include the people I brought back to the game during legion.

9.2 to me is a clear indicator that 10.0 will be more of the same. 101 shitty systems that will piss people off and be made slightly more tolerable somewhere down the line. at least my 6 month sub I haven't touched in a month got me hearthstone freebies. and free hearthstone will be the only blizz game I touch going forward.

[Venziir]

Pet tamer in each zone. 3 rares in Highmaul who dropped resources and pets. 1-2 rares in each zone that dropped mounts. Rukhmar weekly for mount. Tanaan had over a dozen pet challenges, 4 rares that drop toys, 4 rares that mounts, and a rep to grind for more mounts/toys. Then there's keeping your garrison stocked like lumber or leather/fur. Doing apexis dailies for pets/mounts/toys/to trigger the assaults for more pets/mounts/toys. Random heroic for gold and resources. Mythic dungeons once a week.

The only way anyone can say that WoD didn't have content is to either be a liar or someone with special mental gymnastics who selectively ignore everything they don't like as somehow not existing.

Oh wow great content there, "stocked on leather/fur". Basically all of what you mentioned was, indeed, either apexis dailes og garrision stuff. World bosses and pet battles weren't exactly a unique WoD feature.

[Aedruid]

back in wrath, outside of raids and pvp, which are both ingame now, the only "endgame" was shitload of daily quests, so if you dont like repeatable content but played daily in wrath, its almost certainly "you" issue

It took me forever to get through Wrath, so I have no idea what you are talking about. All the quests and lore were awesome and thematic, so I read every quest and enjoyed the story. Running through the area near the Nexus was pretty sick. There's no comparison between fighting an undead scourge + DARGONS and farting pixie dust in Ardenweald. So definitely not a "me" problem.

[Lolites]

It took me forever to get through Wrath, so I have no idea what you are talking about. All the quests and lore were awesome and thematic, so I read every quest and enjoyed the story. Running through the area near the Nexus was pretty sick. There's no comparison between fighting an undead scourge + DARGONS and farting pixie dust in Ardenweald. So definitely not a "me" problem.

really, when you did the daily quests 19874t9384th time you still were reading the quest texts and enjoying the story?
bcs repeatable content is important when talking about "playing daily" not the story, and i doubt you were still doing story quests after 2 years since you played every day, unless you started new character after finishing with story, and even that would get boring after few chars...

and yeah, some daily/world q are more interesting some less, but surely comparing least interesting in one expansion with most interesting in other is a bit unfair...
why not compare the "farting pixie dust" with argent tournament daily quests?
"hit the dummy with each attack 3 times because... reasons" was not interesting even first time... as for the lore goes, yeah that made sense too "i know you killed dragons, old gods and what not but i need you to prove you can fight" is surely story/lore highpoint

[Aedruid]

really, when you did the daily quests 19874t9384th time you still were reading the quest texts and enjoying the story?
bcs repeatable content is important when talking about "playing daily" not the story, and i doubt you were still doing story quests after 2 years since you played every day, unless you started new character after finishing with story, and even that would get boring after few chars...

and yeah, some daily/world q are more interesting some less, but surely comparing least interesting in one expansion with most interesting in other is a bit unfair...
why not compare the "farting pixie dust" with argent tournament daily quests?
"hit the dummy with each attack 3 times because... reasons" was not interesting even first time... as for the lore goes, yeah that made sense too "i know you killed dragons, old gods and what not but i need you to prove you can fight" is surely story/lore highpoint

I would rather hit a dummy in the argent tournament than perform a mating quest with a bird as the intro to ardenweald

[Vrinara]

The title is a lie. At least Blizzard isn't releasing a selfie cam for a single patch.

[Ange]

Legion might also be a product of WoD being called a lost cause early, giving them more time to develop it.

TEAM A/B are used for different expansions that are developed at the same time.

Not sure about the content development spin for successfull expansion...

LEGIONs dungeon participation and constant user engagement exploded, tracked by wowprogress and later by raider.io, and all they did was the use zone assets and balancing for dungeon tuning and class/spec tuning was spread out after release over many months.

You did not need 1000 extra content developer for that, it was just a smart decision to implement D3 rifting into WoW and force (read: intial push) the community to deal with it, with the weekly chest loot based on mythic+ participation.

Most of the artwork budget is spend on the leveling experience and a huge part is still raid content with new assets. With the still declining raid participation and just stabilized mythic raiding pool of active players, its clear that artwork or what ever you think might have benefited LEGION compared to WoD is most likely false.

The legendary grind, the AP grind and the sudden success of mythic+ as the new and de facto MAIN PVE ENDGAME above raiding got a lot of players engaged over the whole expansion.

M+ loot and reward has to be constantly nerfed to keep RAIDING relevant for gear progression and with how raid difficulty is still mostly impacted by gearing (the most loot funneling raids, the most gold spend for BoEs is still the biggest advantage) - its clearly a big dilemma for blizzard.

What people dont realize, Blizzard allready accepted the RAIDING / DUNGEON shift and just reduced cost for each raid tier by shrinking it and getting rid of complex tier balancing for each spec.

LEGIONs success was the GRIND and MYTHIC+ with again its endless grind design.

It was a WIN:WIN for everyone, blizzard simplified dungeons (zone assets) and implemented scaling that was developed since challenge modes and later improved for timewalking that required scaling for mobs and effects. All they had to do was a visual representation for the scaling metric, the whole system was allready in the code and balacing was complettly moved POST release.

Who knows, they could have gutted half of LEGIONS zone design, maybe nobody would have cared?!
The biggest complain by far during legion was FLYING,WHEN? because nobody cares for zones or artwork appart from some newbs who just level alone in an MMO and cancel their sub when they hit endgame they dont even like.

[Bakis]

People don't wanna believe it, but Blizzard is simply not investing the same amount of resources in WoW nowadays as they did in the past, and in an MMO game this is far more noticeable than any other genre.

Even I don't wanna believe in it, but this only could be untrue if the next expansion 10.0 is really HUGE, think 10 zones, 3 raids, and 12 dungeons on launch.

We can only hope!

I reason a bit along those lines too well at least that they dont invest as much.
I think Blizzard just dont think of it as a probable long term investment as they used too. After all it is hard to come up with anything new (not just new stupid power systems).
One cannot ignore that WoW also turned towards a microtransaction game. It's an easy, resources cheap and steady income.
BLZ started as a pure enthusiast company, obviously when growing that becomes harder to maintain but just the age of the game itself means most original enthusiast old timers for one reason or another left the company. Activision also stepped into the picture.

WoW can still produce a great expansion just that it is less likely to come up with new stuff. Back to basics is already to some extent tried with Classic and that will probably (hopefully I think) continue with every expansion. BLZ will probably do their best to make a new good xpac, Legion was pretty much liked by many people but it will be increasingly harder to come up with that "new exiting"-feeling.
Especially when WoW tokens, microtransactions and BLZ utter refusal to deal with the bad sides like boosting/selling non-BLZ services cos in the end BLZ make money from ruining the game that way.

Short term that is, hence why I think they kinda lost faith in the franchise as something to pour enormeous resources into after this many years. Better keep it on life support while making up for the fact that the turn over of players increased and it overall lost most subscribers.

In BLZ defense its kinda hard to make the magic happen for the reasons I stated and probably a bunch more while at the same time now being Activision BIG BIZZ.
And I kinda guess the new generation of enthusiast developers also weigh their options thinking if the train might not have passed and look at the plethora of studios out their today in the genre, big or small. At least their pay cant get much worse.

[Zorachus]

I unsubbed in August a month after 9.1, first time in 17 years I have unsubbed from WoW. There's just nothing to do. I don't Raid, and haven't since Legion. I do like M+, but doing the same dungeons over and over a millions times, gets old after awhile. Besides that there's really not much to do in Shittylands. I did re-sub again in October when 9.1.5 released and unsubbed again few days later, that mini patch did nothing for me

I love WoW, but this expansion feels generic, and soulless, and like it was designed on the cheap by the interns or something. And don't even mention the "systems" and systems on top of systems, holy cow Blizzard you gotta stop with this stuff. This powered power crap, and time gating stuff, is zero fun.

Previews for patch 9.2 do nothing to excite me or draw me in.

I hope 10.0 and the next expansion is a ground up redo of the gameplay and design, and please get rid of the "systems" that started in Legion, which weren't too bad then, but got worse in BfA with crap like Essences and Corruption, and then terrible in Shadowlands.

[FelPlague]

Fair point. To be honest, the content that sells expansions for me is the dungeon & raid content, so with both expansions ending after just 3 raids there's not really much in it. However Shadowlands does have the content lead between the pair - Shame it's far behind everything else over the past decade or so. I thought it was an expansion with a lot of promise, but the gaps between patches has been a real killer.

wod also had less dungeons, and no M+

[Elias1337]

TEAM A/B are used for different expansions that are developed at the same time.

Not sure about the content development spin for successfull expansion...

LEGIONs dungeon participation and constant user engagement exploded, tracked by wowprogress and later by raider.io, and all they did was the use zone assets and balancing for dungeon tuning and class/spec tuning was spread out after release over many months.

You did not need 1000 extra content developer for that, it was just a smart decision to implement D3 rifting into WoW and force (read: intial push) the community to deal with it, with the weekly chest loot based on mythic+ participation.

Most of the artwork budget is spend on the leveling experience and a huge part is still raid content with new assets. With the still declining raid participation and just stabilized mythic raiding pool of active players, its clear that artwork or what ever you think might have benefited LEGION compared to WoD is most likely false.

The legendary grind, the AP grind and the sudden success of mythic+ as the new and de facto MAIN PVE ENDGAME above raiding got a lot of players engaged over the whole expansion.

M+ loot and reward has to be constantly nerfed to keep RAIDING relevant for gear progression and with how raid difficulty is still mostly impacted by gearing (the most loot funneling raids, the most gold spend for BoEs is still the biggest advantage) - its clearly a big dilemma for blizzard.

What people dont realize, Blizzard allready accepted the RAIDING / DUNGEON shift and just reduced cost for each raid tier by shrinking it and getting rid of complex tier balancing for each spec.

LEGIONs success was the GRIND and MYTHIC+ with again its endless grind design.

It was a WIN:WIN for everyone, blizzard simplified dungeons (zone assets) and implemented scaling that was developed since challenge modes and later improved for timewalking that required scaling for mobs and effects. All they had to do was a visual representation for the scaling metric, the whole system was allready in the code and balacing was complettly moved POST release.

Who knows, they could have gutted half of LEGIONS zone design, maybe nobody would have cared?!
The biggest complain by far during legion was FLYING,WHEN? because nobody cares for zones or artwork appart from some newbs who just level alone in an MMO and cancel their sub when they hit endgame they dont even like.

Mythic+ was and is one the worst features added right next to flying. it completly ruined dungeon desing and took fun out of them. Dungeons were supostu be this steping stone into raiding and nothing els. This timed nonsense have nothing to do with RPG game and do not belongs into mmo game.

[LTN]

It has a lot of systems... I think blizz confuses that with content.

[cparle87]

No content is obviously hyperbole, but compared to the expansions either side of it, WoD was certainly lacking in things to do.

Shadowlands ending in 9.2 puts it in a similar position - 2 content patches & a total of 3 raids throughout an expansion really is a poor return when compared with anything besides WoD.

Hyperbole is dangerous, though. People go around saying stuff like "WoD had nothing to do." You and I know it's not true, the guy saying it knows it's not true. But some guy who didn't play the expansion hears it, takes it at face value, and joins the WoD or even all of WoW hate bandwagon based on this hyperbole. How many people do you think you see on the forums complaining about WoD actually played it, and how many didn't but are repeating the echo chamber.

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Oh wow great content there, "stocked on leather/fur". Basically all of what you mentioned was, indeed, either apexis dailes og garrision stuff. World bosses and pet battles weren't exactly a unique WoD feature.

So you don't even address most of my post cause you have no counter for it. Then dismiss a good chunk of the rest of it for somehow being lesser content for being garrison related as if that helps your argument. Then write off the rest because other expansions had them too. By your logic the only content Shadowlands has is Torghast because raids, dailies, rares, dungeons, and world quests existed in previous ones. See how ridiculous that sounds?