Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

That is definitely going to happen, no doubt.

I can see them adding it on an early or mid-tier raid boss; perhaps one that is optional.

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is this how the first orcs will be introduced to the priesthood?

Honestly outside the joke, I think Orc Shadowmoon Necrolytes are closer to shadow priests than anything else.

And I do wonder if the Mag'har might have a few holy priests and paladins who learned the ways of the Light but still sided with the orcs in the war. Probably not given how Geyarah reacts but it could explain the inevitable orc paladins given we've been told they will slowly implement all races all classes.

[Foolicious]

Well I'm now let down with Monks

Me too. Fistweaver looks quite alright but everything else needs a lot of work. Like why would they put the statues in the general tree? When do i need jade statue as a windwalker or an aoe taunt? Soothing mist+ statue may be a niche option for brewmaster but i don't see it being a thing so why bother.
Also i never understood the appeal of strike of windlord and why they chose this talent as "old playstyle" to return.

[Nymrohd]

Me too. Fistweaver looks quite alright but everything else needs a lot of work. Like why would they put the statues in the general tree? When do i need jade statue as a windwalker or an aoe taunt?

An AoE taunt distraction is an amazing utility tbh.

[Tentim]

I can see them adding it on an early or mid-tier raid boss; perhaps one that is optional.

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Honestly outside the joke, I think Orc Shadowmoon Necrolytes are closer to shadow priests than anything else.

And I do wonder if the Mag'har might have a few holy priests and paladins who learned the ways of the Light but still sided with the orcs in the war. Probably not given how Geyarah reacts but it could explain the inevitable orc paladins given we've been told they will slowly implement all races all classes.

Nah orcs are blood thirsty monsters in wow lore. Ots one of the few traits from the old warcraft games that carried forward.

They are always opportunistic cowards who only scream honor when called out for allying with demons or dark gods for the 5th...or 6th time.

The closest you get to an honorable orc is one raised by humans or who has a deathbed confession after a life of war crimes.

[Makabreska]

Me too. Fistweaver looks quite alright but everything else needs a lot of work. Like why would they put the statues in the general tree? When do i need jade statue as a windwalker or an aoe taunt? Soothing mist+ statue may be a niche option for brewmaster but i don't see it being a thing so why bother.
Also i never understood the appeal of strike of windlord and why they chose this talent as "old playstyle" to return.

???

This is an increased utility to a whole class that makes them more attractive. Imagine someone overpulled in M+ and you pop a taunt statue to help tank recover.

[Nymrohd]

???

This is an increased utility to a whole class that makes them more attractive. Imagine someone overpulled in M+ and you pop a taunt statue to help tank recover.

And then a ring of peace when the mobs kill the statue and are on their way back. And another tank statue once they cross the ring. At some point a clown car needs to show and pick up some of that monk utility away.


I need someone to explain to me why the original buff/support class of WoW has about one meaningful group buff (Defensive Aura) . . .

[Feali]

???

This is an increased utility to a whole class that makes them more attractive. Imagine someone overpulled in M+ and you pop a taunt statue to help tank recover.

Seriously, Monk utility looks fucking great in Dragonflight. The talent trees really got me even more hooked again.

[loras]

is this how the first orcs will be introduced to the priesthood?

Same way as all young boys from indigneous backgrounds are.

"Inapropriately Touched By The Light, Or How The First Orc Priests Came To Be"

[Nebron]

I can see them adding it on an early or mid-tier raid boss; perhaps one that is optional.

Could be. I imagine it rather as a mix of normal combat and dragonriding, than dragonriding alone fight.

Something like - fight with boss that rides a storm dragon. Chase the dragon that summons tornades which you as a player utilize to keep yourself up in the air. Eventually fight the dragon, bring down adds and so on. Then, once the rider boss is dismounted, fight him in a normal, ground combat.

They can make it optional part of a fight as well, like - ranged dps can bring the adds down or part of the group can jump on drakes and fight them mid-air. That's hard to balance though. Meta will always point to a "proper way" of handling such stuff.

Dragonriding fights could be a risky and difficult concept to pull off properly, thus I don't believe we'd get fully fledged dragonriding fight. Time will tell, there's a lot of potential here.

[Super Dickmann]

I had this idea that if they ever wanted to revamp Outland (as in revamp and replace, Cata Style) they could have Yrel or whoever shift AU Draenor and Superimpose it on Outland. We'd get AU Draenor plus some version of the Netherstorm. Ashran could regretably be lost in the transition . . . Maybe Zangarmarsh would land on top of the Zangar Sea and stay (cause sporelings are fun). Then the Light would be launching their Shining Crusade from there instead of some poorly conceived planar concept for a Plane of Light.

I'm hoping for something very similar to go on when we eventually get to the Light expansion. One of the reasons I really enjoy the AU Mag'har as an addition, past that they have far more cultural variety than the actual Horde races and better mesh what an orc is than the actual MU orcs do at this stage, is that it reaffirmed that AU!Draenor at large would come back. They can have a nostalgia level reusing some of WoD's eras while only having dialogue lines about the rest being there to establish that we can whole-sale import the world's races and peoples to Azeroth and then branch out from there in having the rest of it be AU!Netherstorm and the entry points to Azeroth. Not that I'd be opposed to a Stairway to Heaven. Elden Ring among others has done wonders with a golden, celestial aesthetic for antagonism.

Beyond the fact that Legion's problematic systems did not last long, I think you are underselling how good a sell class halls and artifact cosmetics were. Class Halls were full of poorly used characters we all wanted to see more of (and then less, go home Liadrin). The toys were great, the world was objectively better simply because it was connected and easily navigable (you could take an fp to Highmountain and toy glide anywhere then whistle back; compare to taking an fp to another zone in SL and forgetting you were playing WoW while alt-tabbed). Meanwhile the SL mogs are not class specific and in many cases your best Covenant would not really fit your class theme (or NO Covenant would fit your class theme); also imo they are just not of the same quality as the ones from Legion. Really the only standout covenant hall feature is the Ember Court?

We're making the same points. I agree entirely that Legion's presentation and utiltization of such were better than Shadowlands and it also had novelty on its side, with BFA being worse than either in those regards. Class halls, much as I hate most of them, were better than Covenants in capturing at least some variant of what your PC was about, the sets they provided better matched the topic and they had more individual stories that built on the world we were used to rather than being settled with introducing and selling you on a new setting. These advantages tided over most players during the parts where Legion was notably mechanically weaker than SL would be, and was helped by Legion's fast releases meaning we were never stuck with anything that didn't work for too long. It's why Legion is better than SL. My claim is more is the reason for it and the degree to which it's the case.

Also, monks give me some hope for the first time since WoD made me bored of the class. Still probably won't play one, but cheers to monk players.

[Skildar]

"Inapropriately Touched By The Light, Or How The First Orc Priests Came To Be"

Good quality chuckles

[Kiivar86]

Also i never understood the appeal of strike of windlord and why they chose this talent as "old playstyle" to return.

What's hard to understand? Click button, big cleave. Its fun!

[Nebron]

I'm hoping for something very similar to go on when we eventually get to the Light expansion. One of the reasons I really enjoy the AU Mag'har as an addition, past that they have far more cultural variety than the actual Horde races and better mesh what an orc is than the actual MU orcs do at this stage, is that it reaffirmed that AU!Draenor at large would come back. They can have a nostalgia level reusing some of WoD's eras while only having dialogue lines about the rest being there to establish that we can whole-sale import the world's races and peoples to Azeroth and then branch out from there in having the rest of it be AU!Netherstorm and the entry points to Azeroth. Not that I'd be opposed to a Stairway to Heaven. Elden Ring among others has done wonders with a golden, celestial aesthetic for antagonism.

Not trying to spoil the fun or something alike, but Mag'har happen to be the Allied Race because of design choices Blizzard made for BfA.
Allied Races became a selling point for BfA and Blizz chose them in opposition to "skin variations". It's simply business decision than a lore one. This way they could "sell" the recolors and call it a thing.
Mag'har also have stronger feeling of what orc is, because orcs in Draenor were nomadic tribes and their fantasy was based on tribal cultures, while orcs in MU are just Orgrimmar citizens. I don't think that Blizzard paid any attention to develop races and their cultures deep enough, apart from variants of elves and trolls really? Maybe you can add Taurens to that group as well, but other than that, nope.

Also, Outland has been 'revamped' once for Draenor. I can't imagine them doing Draenor 2.0.
Azeroth 3.0 is my bet here. Time jump into the future thanks to Murozond fight, establishing new characters and heroes, new villians, new kingdoms (Lordaeron for humans, Trolls empire rebuild on Kalimdor, new tree for elves) and so on. This way you can basically re-start WoW from scratch and create new, big scope, overarching stories for expansions to come, rather than keeping the dead alive (what they do now).

If people really want Light antagonists and Yrel, imagine Scarlets 2.0 led by her controlling human kingdoms through influence of "faith".
Imagine Gadgetzan gangs controlling the trade and making deals with villians to reduce the supply of goods here and there.
Imagine some badass necromatic warlords going into battle with Dalaran to steal their knowledge and power.
Or even Dalaran archmage council conspiring to overthrow the current leadership.
Maybe elven new tree causing Kalimdor's drought with some serious consequences for Orcs and Taurens?

Absolute restart of WoW is a huge opportunity, yet requires a lot of resources - but maybe?

[Super Dickmann]

Not trying to spoil the fun or something alike, but Mag'har happen to be the Allied Race because of design choices Blizzard made for BfA.
Allied Races became a selling point for BfA and Blizz chose them in opposition to "skin variations". It's simply business decision than a lore one. This way they could "sell" the recolors and call it a thing.
Mag'har also have stronger feeling of what orc is, because orcs in Draenor were nomadic tribes and their fantasy was based on tribal cultures, while orcs in MU are just Orgrimmar citizens. I don't think that Blizzard paid any attention to develop races and their cultures deep enough, apart from variants of elves and trolls really? Maybe you can add Taurens to that group as well, but other than that, nope.

Oh, it was absolutely done to use the WoD assets that they'd designed. Their scenario takes place in beta-Gorgrond after all. But they could've easily gone any route with it that still reused assets, instead they chose to preserve the clan identities and the Iron Horde theme and also to make one of the most boring cardboard cutouts we've had as an ally in Yrel into a fairly functional antagonist with a gimmick we've not had since Vanilla/Wrath. Of the color swap races cobbled together from reused assets, the Mag'har were by far the best introduced and added the most to their faction story-wise.

It's the business reason on top of just practicality that I don't see an all-encompassing world revamp coming and why what I'm pitching isn't likely, it's more possible. Blizzard have moved their attention in BFA and now down to Tirisfal for the post-SL quest to revamping individual zones, some with just minor touches, some more expansively like Arathi over a wholescale revamp. An expansion setup based on, for example, a pair of revamped zones, one from Azeroth, one from Draenor plus an unused one in Farahlon/Netherstorm and then whatever else they wanted to add as new content fits with their design philosophy. A wholescale revamp is a massive amount of work that like with most of Cataclysm generally goes unused at the end and sucks up dev. resources and if it also disables access to old content it alienates an existing audience.

[Amariw]

We're doing SL post-mortem reviews right?

Overall, pretty meh expansion, around cata level. 6/10 all in all.


Gameplay : 6/10.
DPS still suffer from Legion-era bland rotations, though its enjoyable at times. Healer and Tanks are fun. Pvp started way too bursty and dumb with covenants but as usual it tapered off near final patches and became reasonable with trinket stamina buffs.
As for specific niches of the game:

Mythic+: 7/10.
Pretty good as usual, seasonals are interesting (though s1 was punishing as fuck and s4 and s2 a bit bland, s3 was nice though). Dungeons alright and the experiemental s4 is a nice idea, though i wish they'd took everbloom rather than the boring no mechanic iron horde dungeons.

Raids: 6/10
The raids aren't awful, but pretty bland after BFA's outstanding performances. Aside from maybe Hauldron no boss approaches the epicness and intensity of stuff like BFA Jaina, Mekkatorque, G'huun (stupid orbs aside) and that awesome naga 2-boss raid. Even if mechanics are sometimes alright, they lack the visual awesomeness and story-telling through a fight that the above fights had. Jailer mechanics feel like it could have been any other boss.

Grinds and gearing : 1/10
The worst aspect by far. Its 2022 and blizz still had to wait entire patches to make covenants switchable. Pvp gearing was also an annoying mess until recently, though now its in a decent place (still a pet peeve that conquest is gated on normal seasons and mythic raiding/m+ isn't though).
Targettable legendaries were alright, but mandatory torghast was horeshit and the huge gold cost for leggos was frankly unacceptable. Final patches fixed it as usual with cosmic flux and reduced mats but it's still inexcusable that it took this long. Much rejoicing for DF simply letting us pick our powers with talents and the occasional set pieces.

Solo Outdoors : 2/10.
The maw was an interesting experiment, but they focused too much on making it unpleasant and too little on giving you reasons to be excited to be there. No catchup/gradual gear goals for alts or mains. No mounting (though i could somewhat accept this as you could unlock transport shortcuts over time). I'm cool with no flying there.

But worse of all, this expac had the least reason to engage with not-rare elites since, hell, any expac. Even BFA had those n'zoth invasions with elites that gave % for the weekly quest. You were encouraged to fight the world if you wanted to. In SL we had nothing like the region-wide Timeless Isle currency, so elites just sit there, pointless except the ocasional mount farmer in zereth mortis. That place is particularly at fault for relegating them to a few tiny subzones.
When no exciting combat happens in outdoors, it becomes so boring it doesn't feel worth engaging in, and that's loosing a huge portion of what once was a very fun part of wow. All those endless pocopoc systems and buffs would be worth it if i actually had a good reason to be there and fight beside flux grinding rares.

Also as a side note, world quests became needlessly involved and annoying. BFA wasn't the best but atleast you had those "just kill alot for 100% completion" wqs and you could target elites for bigger %.


Story : 2/10
Story's one of the most boring, with almost zero interesting world building in my opinion, a very shallow investigation into the concept of death, Sylvanas ending up being a colossal fool (after BFA made me at least curious why she decided to trust some mysterious evil guy and what was her end goal).

Final raid/story arc has so many weird issues. Why is Azeroth's world soul suddenly in the Sepulcher? Why was the jailer so evil he wanted to remake universe in his image? why couldn't he just band together with his fellow eternals? They glossed over this and whats left is this super shallow generic "evil guy wants universal domination" with no reason to care.

Tyrande story arc felt pointless and not satisfying. It's maybe more moral or level headed to not seek vengeance, but it felt bland. Her whole powerup and anger achieved almost nothing, and elune might as well have cut to the chase and just given them the ardenweald sigil.
There's also no interesting foreshadowing/reveals beside Argus being the cause of arbiter nuke. Another "some outer threat made jailer/sargeras mad so they had to betray the good guys" hint, which is getting kinda old. No relatable chars, and too much focus on soap opera crew instead of an interesting universe.

Nothing interesting was hinted or gradually revealed like Yogg Saron's/C'thun's mysterious and threatening presence in northrend, the Mogu's titanforged history being slowly unveiled, the Sha's connection to old gods etc. It felt like every patch was just a tiny gated "jailer will now attack x zone", but you barely learned anything about his motivations or personality. Probably wow's worst endboss and expansion villain. That's not to mention stupidity like the Forsworn trusting a universal genocider just because he was the previous arbiter, or whatever reason it is that made them think its smart to betray their whole order. Just writing about it irks me.

Overall, a pretty bad modern expansion, around same bullshit grind level as BFA and early Legion, around similarly decent final patches that came too late. Pvp gearing early on around same stupidity as BFA, better in final patches, much worse then legion's templates. A general disappointment that i'm happy to see gone.

[Nebron]

Oh, it was absolutely done to use the WoD assets that they'd designed. Their scenario takes place in beta-Gorgrond after all. But they could've easily gone any route with it that still reused assets, instead they chose to preserve the clan identities and the Iron Horde theme and also to make one of the most boring cardboard cutouts we've had as an ally in Yrel into a fairly functional antagonist with a gimmick we've not had since Vanilla/Wrath. Of the color swap races cobbled together from reused assets, the Mag'har were by far the best introduced and added the most to their faction story-wise.

It's the business reason on top of just practicality that I don't see an all-encompassing world revamp coming and why what I'm pitching isn't likely, it's more possible. Blizzard have moved their attention in BFA and now down to Tirisfal for the post-SL quest to revamping individual zones, some with just minor touches, some more expansively like Arathi over a wholescale revamp. An expansion setup based on, for example, a pair of revamped zones, one from Azeroth, one from Draenor plus an unused one in Farahlon/Netherstorm and then whatever else they wanted to add as new content fits with their design philosophy. A wholescale revamp is a massive amount of work that like with most of Cataclysm generally goes unused at the end and sucks up dev. resources and if it also disables access to old content it alienates an existing audience.

Wait, I'm not sure if we are on the same page. Re-using assets is one thing, stating that introducing Mag'har Orcs reaffirms that AU Draenor would come back - is something very different. And the latter is literally what you have said:

One of the reasons I really enjoy the AU Mag'har as an addition, past that they have far more cultural variety than the actual Horde races and better mesh what an orc is than the actual MU orcs do at this stage, is that it reaffirmed that AU!Draenor at large would come back.

I don't think that is the case. It's just that people, me included, reeally wanted to have more customization options, especially the "skin/clans variations". I believe there was even a megathread about it. And instead, they gave players the Allied Races. Since orcs are a pretty obvious choice for an Allied Race and actually easy to implement due to their nature of "tribal people", they went for Mag'har, because... who else? which includes all sorts of skin tones and tattoos (Blackrocks included). But there's always a scenario involved, and we've met true Mag'hars on Draenor, so they made a scenario on Draenor to introduce these race as a playable one.

I'm not saying Yrel is not a thing and cannot be incorporated into an expansion. I just point out that it doesn't reaffirm anything really. I'd be super surprised if we got Outland/Draenor 3.0. Especially that there is a negative sentiment attached to WoD.
Also, I'm not convinced on Light vs. Void stuff, it doesn't matter if I hate it, and I do wholeheartedly, but it's just another space-scoped story, which majority of players dislike. Invasion of Armies of the Light is just so out of place when it comes to Warcraft IP. I don't think they could pull it off well. Light has always been associated as a counterpart for death in Warcraft stories, and to see some lightforged orcs - I mean, it doesn't need any explanation really, it's just like blending a tuna with strawberries for a smoothie. It doesn't work and leaves a bad taste for years. I'd be such a huge change to storytelling that if the fck that up, there would be no turning back.

Since Legion, they messed up so much of the lore, that it just rips the logic apart.
I agree. Full revamp of Azeroth would devour a lot of resources. It also makes an issue when it comes to "fresher" expansions - they certainly won't revamp zones from Legion on, so there would be a huge disconnection when it comes to storytelling. But then again, WoW is getting super old now, we've discovered a lot of places on the map. What's left is the space I guess, or the other side of the Azeroth, but that would require a lot of explanatory power to justify. And space, as mentioned, feels out of place.

[Super Dickmann]

Wait, I'm not sure if we are on the same page. Re-using assets is one thing, stating that introducing Mag'har Orcs reaffirms that AU Draenor would come back - is something very different. And the latter is literally what you have said:

I don't think that is the case. It's just that people, me included, reeally wanted to have more customization options, especially the "skin/clans variations". I believe there was even a megathread about it. And instead, they gave players the Allied Races. Since orcs are a pretty obvious choice for an Allied Race and actually easy to implement due to their nature of "tribal people", they went for Mag'har, because... who else? which includes all sorts of skin tones and tattoos (Blackrocks included). But there's always a scenario involved, and we've met true Mag'hars on Draenor, so they made a scenario on Draenor to introduce these race as a playable one.

I'm not saying Yrel is not a thing and cannot be incorporated into an expansion. I just point out that it doesn't reaffirm anything really. I'd be super surprised if we got Outland/Draenor 3.0. Especially that there is a negative sentiment attached to WoD.

AU!Draenor's plot points can come back without the area itself returning, and the bulk of it is already imported - that being the Mag'har orcs, saberon and primals. The only thing left are Yrel and the Army of Light, which has future expansion written all over it. They could have them invade from another location or have them be allies or whatever, but they'll still be a direct follow-up on AU!Draenor's story, which is the point of what I'm getting at. That it's asset reuse doesn't mandate its story role. They could have imported the skins in any way they chose, but the fashion they chose brought in the most prominent parts of WoD back to the fore. You can easily have a reskin quest that goes nowhere, like the HM tauren or DI dwarf ones that add nothing but watered down versions of base races to take advantage of model effort for prior expansions.

I'm not saying Yrel is not a thing and cannot be incorporated into an expansion. I just point out that it doesn't reaffirm anything really. I'd be super surprised if we got Outland/Draenor 3.0. Especially that there is a negative sentiment attached to WoD.
Also, I'm not convinced on Light vs. Void stuff, it doesn't matter if I hate it, and I do wholeheartedly, but it's just another space-scoped story, which majority of players dislike. Invasion of Armies of the Light is just so out of place when it comes to Warcraft IP. I don't think they could pull it off well. Light has always been associated as a counterpart for death in Warcraft stories, and to see some lightforged orcs - I mean, it doesn't need any explanation really, it's just like blending a tuna with strawberries for a smoothie. It doesn't work and leaves a bad taste for years. I'd be such a huge change to storytelling that if the fck that up, there would be no turning back.

Invaders from another world are the baseline of both the most succcessful RTS and the very first expansion, an expansion that explicitly features spaceships as raid locales. The clownery of that segment of the fanbase aside, orcs invading through a portal backed by some other power has been the format of two expansions by now and the crib of the franchise. Crusades by a militant space church are a standard sci-fi fantasy trope that the game has taken advantage of before, but never on the same scale, providing an aesthetic that has always had dungeons or individual under-used places like the Xenedar in Krokuun in Legion, but not the full scope of what it can do as an expansion focus. It constitutes no change to speak of the setting that TBC didn't do and TBC itself did a lot less in terms of fundamental dicking with the make-up of a setting than either WoD's time travel premise or SL's afterlife. A Light-based invasion expansion would occupy the TBC niche of a space-originating expansion that's still tied to Azeroth by dint of faith - the Light, and races - orcs, draenei, naaru.

As for the overall future expansion design, beyond adding new unexplored islands, the bridge-head approach is the absolute likeliest. It doesn't have to be Yrel, it could be a timeskip that focuses on a regional conflict or robots erupting from the earth or what have you, but the format of a handful refurbished zones to modern standards joined by entirely new areas that they're connected to is the most plausible. Discounting outliers like K'aresh and so forth.

[Sondrelk]

We're doing SL post-mortem reviews right?

Overall, pretty meh expansion, around cata level. 6/10 all in all.

-snip-

Personally I would place SL similarly in a 5/10, though giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming the droughts never took place it's probably closer to an 8/10.


Gameplay
Have not played enough classes to a level good enough to say for sure, but I feel a 7/10 might be about right. My preferred spec of MM still struggles to find an identity though.
The covenant abilities were neat, but rarely interesting enough to really change the rotation of a spec to any significant extent.


Mythic+
This is one of those systems that definitely get significant improvements each iteration, and I personally found all the seasonal affixes intriguing enough to make each season feel unique. Season 2 and 3 were definitely the best ones to my mind, Season 3 being fairly boring, but definitely saved by the intriguing prospect of a new set of dungeons.
That being said I feel a distinct lack of mechanically interesting bosses. Ones with interesting mechanics like the Chosen boss in Theater of Pain, or Devos in spires are few and far between.
Tazavesh is a definite highlight though, easily the best of the three megadungeons.

Going to give dungeons an 8/10.


Raids
If there is anything that SL makes abundantly clear it is that three raids are simply not enough for an expansion that lasts two years.
Not sure whether to praise or chastise the raid developers for finally finding the upper limit on mechanical complexity for raid bosses, but Sepulcher definitely proved that there was such a thing. Painfully overtuned, and with HC seemingly out of reach for many semi-casual raiding guilds.
Final bosses especially clearly having become too long and complex. Sylvanas will be remembered for many things, but one of those will probably be easily one of the worst designed bosses when it came to balancing epic setpieces with actual minute to minute gameplay.

Fated raids are definitely the biggest highlight or raiding so far, an actual sizeable step forward for raids in terms of variety. Hopefully it will stick around for future end of exoansion droughts, and maybe even being used to liven up longer seasonal droughts as well.

I will give the raids a solid 7/10.


Gearing
Overpriced legendary pieces and annoying legendary grinds aside I would want to praise SL for making the weekly M+ piece so much more by both having it give options in accordance to how many dungeons you completed, but also having those options come from Raids and PvP as well.
Always felt like a chore back in Legion and BfA to do the weekly +10/+15 for a mythic quality piece. And while you still should ideally do that for the best gear, you can now be more of a casual and still get rewarded.

Covenants not being immediately switchable was a bit annoying to begin with, but hardly a deal-breaker unless you were the kind of player to obsess over top parses.

Going to give gearing a solid 8/10, if only for the weekly vault.


Solo Open-World
Pros: Covenant content. Anima farming being a better version of both old AP and Resources by being gained from everything, but also being used for everything.

Cons: The Maw being kinds pointless to start with, specifically lacking an actual tangible challenge and reward. Probably should have just merged The Maw and Torghast into one cohesive whole with a better reward structure.
Even with the 9.1 changes to make it more easily traversable and gaining extra content didn't ever make me sure of why it was even needed to begin with. All the covenant zones had better reward structures and open world content than the Maw did.

Still going to give it a 7/10 for improvements made to the open world with Covennts though, even if I do have to agree they really should have somehow continued with the 8.3 system of everything giving progress, not just small designated chunks.


Story
Don't even want ot talk about it. It's just boring and suffering from both having to drag the corpse of BfA around, while simultaneously attempting to tell a climactic finale to a bunch of old stories.

Sylvanas is just plain unlikeable after BfA, and even attempting to make her a hateable villain falls flat as she is nowhere near interesting enough to sustain even that level of depth. She simply comes across like the biggest idiot on Azeroth, and attempting to give her a redemption is one of the most laughable endeavours I have seen in a while.

The most charitable thing you can really say about the story is that it at least didn't waste as many good plot points ad BfA did, and that unlike that Trainwreck it's relatively easy to ignore the story going forward.

2/10


The story isn't enough to really detract from the good stuff though, even if the lack of a good one impacts the expansion as a whole.
What really killed SL are really just the droughts.

[Dracullus]

Don't forget that drought problem was half of expansion, between 9.0 and release of 9.1.5. After that we returned to Legion schedule - with improvements (Season 4 instead of longer Sepulcher).

People often mock Covid excuse, but in reality everything in Shadowlands was delayed ~6 months (1 month 9.0, ~2.5 month for 9.1, ~2.5 month for 9.2) just like FF14 (where devs were smarter and moved whole launch further).

[Lady Atia]

Don't forget that drought problem was half of expansion, between 9.0 and release of 9.1.5. After that we returned to Legion schedule - with improvements (Season 4 instead of longer Sepulcher).

People often mock Covid excuse, but in reality everything in Shadowlands was delayed ~6 months (1 month 9.0, ~2.5 month for 9.1, ~2.5 month for 9.2) just like FF14 (where devs were smarter and moved whole launch further).

Yeah, honestly the only big problems Shadowlands had was the droughts aswell as the initial design of the Covenants. As soon as we got the ripcord (which lines up with the rumoured dev meeting and course change within the team) the game went from "WoD level of bad" to "End of Legion level of good".

I would rate it with 9/10 now.

Legion = MoP > WotLK = Shadowlands > WoD = TBC > BfA

Honestly, BfA can die in flames lol.