Originally Posted by
Mafic
Howdy, My name is Mafic and I am a super casual player of WoW. I like to craft hexweave bags, do some BGs or do some normal questing content. Spare time I do transmog farming or whatever I think this is fun.
But what prompted me to post this thread is that with the upcoming expansion near I have seen that it is problematic in many facets. The expansion is problematic because of the various issues I have discovered on the PTR with prepatch and also from what beta testers have told me as well as I what have read from the beta. So, here goes to what are the main major problems of Shadowlands.
Prepatch
There are three main problems I have found with prepatch of shadowlands. The first problem is the level squish is not doing as promised as the legacy content has become significantly harder because of two factors. Primarily because of the removal of corruptions/downscaline of essences. And, second because of the botched scaling. Now, in fairness BlizZArd has said they are looking at the scaling issues in legacy raids and dungeons. But! As we have seen many of the scaling issues from the last squish were not address properly and the current scaling in BFA PVP has been a trainwreck of confusion and abuse. And, this time we are going to see a level and item squish all at once to further complicate matters. So far what is happening is that because of the level squish it feels like most recent expansions are not treated as legacy content. For example if you are level 40 after the squish you are going to feel the pain just doing basic legacy raids.
Second problem which is related to the first problem is the legacy loot has been changed and there is no communication from BlizZard on this issue. Is it intended to receive only one gear drop from legacy raid bosses now? I don't know and BlizZard has been radio silent thus far. The impact this had is not only related to raw gold per hour. But also impacts those that like to transmog hunt for gear and also impacts the replay value of older content. It is nice to have something else to look forward to beyond current endgame content. Why take away that player fun?
And the third problem is related to the first two problems which is the hard cap of AoE which impacts legacy farming but also end game. It is very noticeable with BFA content in prepatch that you take longer to take down mobs and it feels all very clunky.
There are other problems with the prepatch regarding the zombie event, mount equipment being unlocked at a higher level than flying, being kicked out of chromie time once you reach level 50, etc.
I could make and entire post talking about the devaluation of gear and the raw gold heading into prepatch but I will save that for another day.
Moving on these are the main issues with shadowlands itself:
1. Covenant structure is too rigid and not congruent to the MMORPG experience. IF WoW was a single player action RPG it wouldn't matter how balanced the respective covenants are. But since WoW is a MMORPG and we do interact with players at some point it is necessary to point out that covenant locking is the not the answer. I feel that punishing those that want to play other specs or alts is not the answer because there is already a shortage of tanks and healers in WoW. There are also various issues with covenants and quests not supported by the story quest chains. So, such a rigid choice does not work or feel like a meaningful choice.
2. Borrowed power that is layered upon each other has stifled the growth of classes at their core base and many classes are incomplete. No new talent tier since WoD and no new baseline abilities since MoP. The legendaries are mostly legendaries from legion itself aka legiondaries and thus does not feel new. The argument for borrowed power was so BlizZard can do something new and experiment with each expansion. Corruption was an experiment but BlizZard did not put much effort or thinking to put into place to make it work. Betraying that principle reveals that borrowed power shenanigans is coming to a close and players are starting to figure it all out. Classes need to be whole again and I don't think the great unpruner has done enough to unprune classes. The lack of communication from the unpruner reveals a deep problem with BlizZard in that they have decided to make a game targeted at an audience that doesn't exist while ignoring their core PC MMORPG audience.
3. Game play loop of systemlands is too linear, narrow and repetitive. The world quests at level cap for the expansion are just very tedious, long and not rewarding. No flight whistles, and the zones are poorly designed with vertical lift that would make WoD zones blush. The lack of flight paths reinforces that the expansion is not that friendly to those that want to be in and out with world quests. True, a weekly cap and less world quests is a plus, but the downside is that BlizZard has designed a game where you spend more time traveling to a few tedious world quests. Also, the lack of no info for part 1 of flying is a big red flag. However, with how disconnected the zones are it is clear that there isn't a solid plan of how flying will be allowed in the upcoming expansion. The worst has to be the MAW though as not even ground mounts are allowed in there and it is required to be in there for progression which feels bad IMVHO.
4. Lack of player agency in general is something that has plagued WoW the last few expansions but is very noticeable with the upcoming expansion. At Blizzcon BlizZard said they wanted to return player agency but I don't see it that way with covenant locking, no info on part 1 of flying, torghast not being the roguelike experience as sold at blizzcon, etc.
Classes still feel bad with the GCD and it will be more noticeable with the active covenant abilities. In short there are many problems with shadowlands and time is running out.
Can they fix these issues? Sure.
But they have to start to listen to feedback from players on the PTR and beta forums. That is how BFA went down the tubes because they ignored the feedback from players and rushed BFA out.
Lets hope that does not happen with the upcoming expansion.