Originally Posted by
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.
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Legion model wasn't small frequent patches, they were big I mean the model SL used wasn't really((9.1.9.2
