Shadowlands is the "players were right" expansion.

[arandomuser]

Dude...member when we saw anti-titanforging threads everyday and we thought "everyone" hated it?

And then...member now when we had a couple "i miss titanforging" threads?

Literally impossible.

I distinctly remember in 2016 during the wod drought one of the "influencers" that blizzard listens to was talking about " we need permanent things on your main that matter to your core progression"

fast forward to 2020 and that same guy is shitting on artifacts and essences

and literally the design goal with essences was listening to preach/bellular who said they wanted something on their main that felt unique to their main

the customer is NOT always right

[Barzotti]

I wouldn't say this, as this is still the first Alpha build.

But...

It's a step in the right direction, I guess?

It entirely depends on what is the "right direction" for you.

[Biomega]

You mean the piss easy heroic dungeons after people were in Ulduar gear and had 6 plus months of experience in them. There were countless threads about the difficulty of many heroics especially the final bosses and how some classes couldn't tank or heal them as well as other classes. Sure we all remember the the 3.3 zerg days but you all forget the 3.0 hard as hell days.

There's a difference between "there were power disparities in dungeons that weren't just a mindless AoE zerg" and "hard as hell". WotLK dungeons were never "hard as hell". They weren't as easy in the beginning as they were later on, that's for sure, but they were nowhere NEAR the level that, say, Cataclysm heroics were at the start, when they actually tried to make dungeons challenging.

And "some classes couldn't tank/heal them as well as others" is true; but you can't read that as "some classes couldn't tank/heal them". Which I'm sure you weren't trying to suggest, but still needs to be reiterated. Any tank/heal class could easily jump into farming WotLK dungeons, some just did it even more easily.

The hardest part about WotLK dungeons on release was getting people to understand how The Oculus works. Everything else was WoW basics.

In any event, I don't expect regular/heroic dungeons to ever be any sort of challenge ever again. Even regular mythic. M+ is the scaling difficulty we have now for people who want dungeons to be tough, so everything else is going to be easy to the point of trivial when compared against that. Same as with normal/LFR raiding - it's all relative difficulty when it comes to assessment. That's why it makes little sense to compare, say, Classic to BFA and equate one-difficulty raiding to a spectrum ranging from LFR to mythic. It doesn't work that way.

[Chromell]

inb4 Shadowlads sucks, BFA was miles better...

following by:

Wrath of the dingadongle cataclysmic mist of draenor is horrid, Shadowlands was bestest expansion everer

and so on

One thing I'm almost certain I'll never read here is: WoD (or BfA) was the best expansion ever!

At least not with it being a popular opinion.

[Unholyground]

Should this expansion turn out to work and the design decisions are validated, Blizzard needs to do one thing for 10.0.

Nothing. Constant iteration has heavily damage this game as they strive to reinvent it with every expansion. If Shadowlands is the working formula, STOP ITERATING. Just create new content, new quests, new zones, new stories. If 10.0 is the same game as 9.0, what of it if 9.0 was a wild success?

If that requires a new roguelike dungeon for Torghast, just do another one. If crafting our own legendaries is a brilliant system, just do that again.

No need to continually reinvent the wheel which each expansion because there's 50/50 chance doing so will make the next expansion suck.

Iteration is not what they did, they changed core facets of the game and reasons many players enjoyed it for mobile game gatcha mechanics and design in a monthly payed game, it was a bad idea lol.

[huth]

And Torghast is mandatory, so does it really matter if AP is on a weapon or neck or on a dungeon?

It matters a lot, because these Anima Powers are a completely different beast than Artifact Power. And they're exclusive to Torghast, you can't take them with you.

[TheFirstOnes]

It entirely depends on what is the "right direction" for you.

By not being BFA.

[Lucetia]

They've backflipped on almost all their egregious design choices.

They haven't backflipped. It's called a new expansion attempting different things.

Almost everything every level headed person has been saying is wrong with the game is getting fixed in Shadowlands. It's almost like Ion and his legion of fanboys were wrong the whole time.

Which guess what doesn't mean it is better for the game just because masses say it is.

I mean there is still some shit things like we don't know much about Anima Power(AP) and the Covenant abilities can NEVER be balanced(Blizzard is dogshit at balancing).

This here shows how much you don't pay attention to start with, but claim you know how the game could be so much better. Has been announced since Blizzcon and there was even an article last week.

At this point though it turns out the Blizz Defenders were wrong. It's too early to celebrate but from a pessimist at least they're saying all the right things. Ion is a pathological liar though so only time will tell.

Except you can't say anyone was wrong at this point. You have to wait until mid-expansion to get an idea. Just because they implemented ideas the vocal minority says are good, doesn't mean they will and people will be flip flopping so much later on in the expansion.

Should this expansion turn out to work and the design decisions are validated, Blizzard needs to do one thing for 10.0.

Nothing. Constant iteration has heavily damage this game as they strive to reinvent it with every expansion. If Shadowlands is the working formula, STOP ITERATING. Just create new content, new quests, new zones, new stories. If 10.0 is the same game as 9.0, what of it if 9.0 was a wild success?

No, just no. If they don't try to add new things, reinvent things it will be stagnant and people will leave. People are already leaving because they feel like its the same thing over and over. The whole point of a new expansion is to try new system, add new things, readjust things. Just adding new zones, quests, stories is nothing and is basically just an over glorified patch. A ton of people won't buy an expansion when they know it is something they can just put into a patch.

Which goes back to the idea of "just because vocal minority thinks it is good for the game doesn't mean it is."

If that requires a new roguelike dungeon for Torghast, just do another one. If crafting our own legendaries is a brilliant system, just do that again.

No need to continually reinvent the wheel which each expansion because there's 50/50 chance doing so will make the next expansion suck.

Doing things exactly the same for multiple expansions gets old and boring. Toghast could be a major hit, if they repeat that in the following expansion interest will very likely drop sharply because it's a "been there, done that" thing. Which means people will only do it for the rewards and stop.

By not being BFA.

Then either next expansion or the one after, people like you will be saying how BFA was a great expansion, why can't we go back to then. It never fails. Every expansion has been through this. Even Cata and WoD the people who said it sucked and hated it now like it and miss it.

[Barzotti]

By not being BFA.

You will probably love Shadowlands then.

[Eazy]

Hm...wowhead, reddit...are there facebook groups? WoW twitter? Obviously the official wow forums. Are there many that I missed and that could account for something like at least 500 000 contributors to WoW in a "vocal" way. As a mod once said...even here if is a handful ppl going back and forth.

So...you can insist on your point as you very well know nobody can gather the info you ask for. Even if they managed to dig up the bluepost where a dev or CM said that very few ppl are vocal on forums, most are in game playing and that is where they get most of their data from.

But yeah "Dude trust me" as well as "the playerbase wants x" is a staple here and not least when you start to ask around how many subs retail or classic may have. Always a good source of amusement.

And just by skimming through this thread you get tons of "I think" and "x happened because of z" without source...that is a big chunks of how forums work. Oh yeah...and not like people always come back when you present a quote or data...they usually have picked a fight with the next guy.

I just wanted to say that it's impossible to tell if it's vocal minority or not.
And just because it's vocal(on the forums/groups/social media) it doesn't mean they are wrong. It's like putting everyone in the big bag and calling them "vocal minority". How the hell can she actually say if they're vocal minority or not if she didn't ask them about their opinion?
People here are just saying their opinion and that's all...

[Zero Wing]

You mean the piss easy heroic dungeons after people were in Ulduar gear and had 6 plus months of experience in them. There were countless threads about the difficulty of many heroics especially the final bosses and how some classes couldn't tank or heal them as well as other classes. Sure we all remember the the 3.3 zerg days but you all forget the 3.0 hard as hell days.

This is definitely not as I remember it. I remember going in and being flabbergasted the first week at how easy normal and heroic dungeons were. There were no challenges on the level of (e.g.) Heroic Shadow Labyrinth. One reason is that the ability for all tanks to tank large groups of trash without worrying about losing aggro made all dungeons easier regardless of mechanics. But neither were the bosses as hard. My memory is fuzzy, but I would say that about the hardest boss encounter in any release heroic in Wrath was Ingvar the Plunderer in Heroic Utgarde Keep. And yes, there was SOME difficulty there, but compared to Murmur or Quagmirran or Kargath? And again, the trash was uniformly just way, way, way easier.

I was terribly disappointed by a lot of the design decisions in Wrath: a lot of decisions that most of the people in this thread would say were improvements. I totally understand and to some degree agree with the moniker of "Wrath-baby". I came back for the beginning of Cata in the hopes that Blizzard had seen the error of their ways, and was completely disillusioned (even though, yes, the heroics were harder, and I did like that). I hope they will start to court players like me again instead of players that want things that drive me away from the game, and if it means that those players are instead driven away, so be it. If we can't both be happy, I want to be happy and I want them to go play a different game.

[Powerogue]

I'd argue the same about Legion basically backflipping on everything that defined WOD. It does sound promising in that respect, but as always we wait and see. I never hated titanforging but even I have to admit having none of it or corruption either would be better than our current patch.

[Unholyground]

This is definitely not as I remember it. I remember going in and being flabbergasted the first week at how easy normal and heroic dungeons were. There were no challenges on the level of (e.g.) Heroic Shadow Labyrinth. One reason is that the ability for all tanks to tank large groups of trash without worrying about losing aggro made all dungeons easier regardless of mechanics. But neither were the bosses as hard. My memory is fuzzy, but I would say that about the hardest boss encounter in any release heroic in Wrath was Ingvar the Plunderer in Heroic Utgarde Keep. And yes, there was SOME difficulty there, but compared to Murmur or Quagmirran or Kargath? And again, the trash was uniformly just way, way, way easier.

I was terribly disappointed by a lot of the design decisions in Wrath: a lot of decisions that most of the people in this thread would say were improvements. I totally understand and to some degree agree with the moniker of "Wrath-baby". I came back for the beginning of Cata in the hopes that Blizzard had seen the error of their ways, and was completely disillusioned (even though, yes, the heroics were harder, and I did like that). I hope they will start to court players like me again instead of players that want things that drive me away from the game, and if it means that those players are instead driven away, so be it. If we can't both be happy, I want to be happy and I want them to go play a different game.

I think it has to be a balance but the work you put in should always feel meaningful and that is the key to things feeling/being more rewarding which creates a sense of player satisfaction.

[Raetary]

And Torghast is mandatory, so does it really matter if AP is on a weapon or neck or on a dungeon?

Yes?
Are you fucking serious?

Artifact power is a grindable resource to lvl your -insert artifact here- to lvl 80 or what not.
Anima powers are instant buffs to your character for that specific torghast run you are in.

They are not even remotely comparable.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

So no replay value is what you want personally raiding without gear upgrades defeats the purpose of raiding totally, might as well bring back the garrison table if thats where they are looking to go

the replay value is there its called warcraftlogs compet with other palyers to be the best, this the reason i hardcore raid for 11 years by now no one except bads greed for loot good players care only for worldranks personal (logs) and guild (wowporgress) same goes for M+ player, do you think i do the +24 keys for loot? lol

[Beefhammer]

This is definitely not as I remember it. I remember going in and being flabbergasted the first week at how easy normal and heroic dungeons were. There were no challenges on the level of (e.g.) Heroic Shadow Labyrinth. One reason is that the ability for all tanks to tank large groups of trash without worrying about losing aggro made all dungeons easier regardless of mechanics. But neither were the bosses as hard. My memory is fuzzy, but I would say that about the hardest boss encounter in any release heroic in Wrath was Ingvar the Plunderer in Heroic Utgarde Keep. And yes, there was SOME difficulty there, but compared to Murmur or Quagmirran or Kargath? And again, the trash was uniformly just way, way, way easier.

I was terribly disappointed by a lot of the design decisions in Wrath: a lot of decisions that most of the people in this thread would say were improvements. I totally understand and to some degree agree with the moniker of "Wrath-baby". I came back for the beginning of Cata in the hopes that Blizzard had seen the error of their ways, and was completely disillusioned (even though, yes, the heroics were harder, and I did like that). I hope they will start to court players like me again instead of players that want things that drive me away from the game, and if it means that those players are instead driven away, so be it. If we can't both be happy, I want to be happy and I want them to go play a different game.

Then you have a different recollection than most because the forums were flooded with this heroic is impossible, nerd heroics and so on until people out geared them. Most only remember queuing up for them in LFD and zerging 7, which LFD was in 3.3, so it was well after everyone knew what to expect and out geared them by a ton.

Halls of Reflection killed groups routinely after they launched, and the the path to and the last boss of Pit as well.

But for most they were hard. Not nearly as unforgiving as Cata Heroics, it was typically 1 boss that did it in WotLK. But as a forum regular on the official and my specific server forum, people bitched like crazy early on.

[Nerovar]

I am still wondering and trying to find out what this mythical "playerbase" is. Nobody has answered. Can you?

Though I really think it is "people agreeing with my opinion on a forum and I extend that to everyone thinks that way" (even though there are zero threads on any forum where people ever agreed on anything)

Come on, dude. This is just muddying the waters at this point. What a useless fucking question.

There's obviously some type of feedback that Blizzard manages to extract from data gathered in game, surveys, forums etc. otherwise they probably wouldn't reiterate some of the talking points we've heard a lot in the past years. The question whether 90%, 50% or only 5% of "the playerbase" (in this case, meaning the totality of all WoW players) agree with these points isn't really all that relevant when it comes to Blizzard deciding if they want to actually act on these suggestions. Therefor when I said "the playerbase" in my previous post, it's also completely irrelevant whether that encompasses a majority or just one person. Feedback is feedback and it ultimately only gets validated by Blizzard regardless of whether some random people on some forum agree with it or not.

[Liarparadox]

Ion is a pathological liar though so only time will tell.

That guy is such a condescending pos.

But ya seems like lots of good info for Shadowlands. I'm pretty happy about almost everything i've heard and read so far. My biggest worry is the balance between covenants/faction stuff.

[Zero Wing]

Then you have a different recollection than most because the forums were flooded with this heroic is impossible, nerd heroics and so on until people out geared them. Most only remember queuing up for them in LFD and zerging 7, which LFD was in 3.3, so it was well after everyone knew what to expect and out geared them by a ton.

Halls of Reflection killed groups routinely after they launched, and the the path to and the last boss of Pit as well.

But for most they were hard. Not nearly as unforgiving as Cata Heroics, it was typically 1 boss that did it in WotLK. But as a forum regular on the official and my specific server forum, people bitched like crazy early on.

I do remember the patch 3.3 heroics being harder on release than any of the original Wrath heroics, and that seems to be what you're talking about, so maybe you and I agree to some extent. However, I was really talking only about the ones that shipped with the game (patch 3.0.2).

[Jastall]

You could literally say the same thing about Legion.

Hate that Illidan was made a villain? He a good boi now!

Want Ashbringer? You get Ashbringer, and you get Ashbringer, everyone gets Ashbringer! And Doomhammer! And Alleria's bow! and the rest.

Dungeons are irrelevant? M+ says hi.

Not enough world content? My dudes, we got world content IN our world content now.

Want more power progression? We gotcha covered and then some.

Want Argus? Ask and ye shall receive.


One could also mention Wrath making the game a lot more accessible after the attunement and raid-heavy mess that was TBC, Cata trying to make the game harder after Wrath made casual content faceroll, or WoD going back to badass Orcs doing badass things after the lolpandas, or implementing player housing.

Shadowlands may be the "YOU as a player were right" expansion, if you want to twist it that way. "The players" is far too general a statement to take seriously.