Dungeons locked until zone progress made whine.
So, essentially, Frodo and the rest of the group should be able to spam Mount Doom the moment Gandalf gave them the story mission to destroy The Ring? Before they actually went there, right?
This is actually a better thing. It makes far more sense lorewise. Brings the RPG aspect to it.
I never understand players complaining about the lack of choice, exploration, etc. What are you expecting from a video game ? It's not real life, it's a construct. As a construct, it's made by design. You can only have so much freedom in a world that was designed to be interacted with in some way. Blizzard chose to design Shadowlands this way, at least for a first playthrough.
Did you prefer to have the game making you choose random zones with no idea why you're going there ? Then just run around trying to find quests in order to level ? Or just randomly kill mobs to get xp with story connected to it ? How is this more compelling than what we have now ? Most people would get bored and drop out of a game like this. You're not being fair talking about a "checklist of quests" because this is not what's in the game. Quests always worked this way, since classic. You have your questline, you go places, kill mobs, talk to npc, collect items, and repeat. This is not a surprise. If anything, quests are better than ever before because of the clear distinction between Campaigns and Quests, alowing you to know what's the main story and what you can avoid if you want to. These side-quests are exactly what brings more exploration, allow you to diverge from the main path if you want to. There are rare mobs everywhere, events during leveling, you can gather herbs and ores, etc.
Maybe you'd prefer to level with only dungeons, but if you're not interested in the zones and the story, why not make it a succession of gray rooms with mobs to kill, endlessly. Mobs ? Maybe just spheres and cubes. Of course this sounds ridiculous. It's like you want to play another game and are upset this is not it... I just don't get it. Or maybe, on the opposite, you'd want the story to be told exclusively in the dungeons and raids. Then we can only have a big hub with a bunch of instance portals and idle all together close to the mailbox...
Whats the problem with this exactly? Honestly I prefer to do the dungeon at the end of the zone when I've unlocked any quests to be done inside of it. Free gear and XP for something I was going to do anyway.
Remember how people loved attunement, and how TBC was so great because of it until they experienced very minor attunements in Legion?
While I respect OP's opinion, I disagree that it's what's wrong with modern WoW as though it were some perfect microcosm of the game's issues. There's nothing wrong with wanting and requiring players to experience the story campaign on their first trip through in an RPG. The system is designed such that once you do so once, you can level alts in Adventure Mode and dugneon grind to your heart's content if you so please.
It's not even all that big an ask. Leveling in Shadowlands is one of the faster level grinds for an expansion launch, up there with Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
whats wrong with modern wow? the playerbase. a playerbase stuck in 2008.