Soo...Is Shadowlands any good?

[Stormbreed]

pvp honor gear is 158 ilvl right? How are you getting 171 "very quickly" from that? Not to mention each piece is 400-800 honor, and upgrading it is 500-1500 honor per upgrade. Nothing about that screams quickly to me. Not to mention I think you need a certain renown level to even be able to upgrade the gear, which isn't even available yet to us.

Week two full 171 is pretty quick if you ask me. 2 5 hour sessions per week.

[Depakote]

The quest is in a region beyond the elite enemies, it's solo doable and not marked to require other players. So no, it is a solo quest that is just placed really badly (like a lot of things in Shadowlands, e.g. flight masters, graveyards).

I mean they probably think that having so many elites surrounding a world quest would make people realize that it wasn't soloable but i guess some people aren't able to see logic.

[LordTakeo]

Being forced into a line of quests is far from a fundemental feature of mmo's.

Nor is interest in the storyline a requirement.

Thankfully you can just blaze through the mainstory quests, and all alts are freed from it.

[Acidbaron]

Levelling felt a bit fast but that was good considering a lot of it were the same old quests formats.

Enjoying the less busy work approach. Torghast is fun, yet to do dungeons

[Zka]

can't solo past level 2 Torghast

wow, which spec is that?

[Dhrizzle]

The zones are all pretty awesome, it's nice to see the art department let loose with full on, ultra-high fantasy settings. I also really like the concept, exploring the afterlife is really cool even if it's existentially terrifying from an RP perspective.

Questing has been quite fun, more on rails than the last few expansions but not quite as bad Cataclysm. There's a lot of walking-and-talking to get exposition and I find myself sometimes interrupting NPCs when they're about to give some more background info. When it works it works to improve atmosphere but it isn't perfect.

Only done a couple of dungeons but they seem alright so far, strike a nice balance between players needing to pay a bit of attention to mechanics but they don't wipe you instantly when you mess up.

[Zka]

+ disc feels good so far, shadow has never been so fun to play, FINALLY they gave up on the shitcluster voidform
+ artworks are wonderful, even green questing gear looked great on my character
+ Torghast is pretty fun, layer 3 endboss was fairly challenging as disc
+ storytelling is great
- professions... they sounded good, but once again everything interesting is put behind timegates or rep grinds, turning many of the options like item level boost pointless
- questing experience is SOOO ON RAIL, there is zero replay value, I'm already afraid of playing alts, all these unskippable RPs and escorts are going to kill me
- all the dungeons were meh or just plain annoying/boring so far
- some WQs are just too long

[Demithio]

That's fair, though as someone who hasn't bought it yet I still am interested in early impressions. Overall this thread makes it sound like waiting is the better option. Maybe next xpac.

I haven't bought it yet either (doubt I will), and I get the same impression. Its just not there. Not surprising, however. WoW has taken a major down turn since Cataclysm, with a small exception nod going to MoP (perhaps Legion? I dunno). One thing I wouldn't do is look forward to 'next xpac' to bring back WoW to its former glory.

As of now, WoW needs move to purchase to play mode, and not purchase AND pay a sub fee. It's gotten far too linear and watered down to demand both expansion purchase price and sub fees.

I recall the days when people used to flock to buy the new expansion, and gladly paid the sub fee. The general excitement was off the chart (ala TBC, Wotlk, even cataclysm). Sad really, what WoW has fallen to.

[Shadowferal]

I haven't bought it yet either (doubt I will), and I get the same impression. Its just not there. Not surprising, however. WoW has taken a major down turn since Cataclysm, with a small exception nod going to MoP (perhaps Legion? I dunno). One thing I wouldn't do is look forward to 'next xpac' to bring back WoW to its former glory.

As of now, WoW needs move to purchase to play mode, and not purchase AND pay a sub fee. It's gotten far too linear and watered down to demand both expansion purchase price and sub fees.

I recall the days when people used to flock to buy the new expansion, and gladly paid the sub fee. The general excitement was off the chart (ala TBC, Wotlk, even cataclysm). Sad really, what WoW has fallen to.

I'm on full empathy.

And that's why there's "Classic."

[Oneirophobia]

There are people on here who seem well adjusted, but you've got to admit they're in the minority.

Sometimes I go to MMO champion just to see how long it takes to find a completely unhinged take - it never takes more than 10 or 20 seconds to do that. I don't really know of anywhere else where you can so consistently find posters who have completely lost their fucking minds.

Just saying. There's a lot of people on here who spend an unhealthy amount of time trying to find new and interesting things to hate.

4chan, specifically /pol/. It's an absolute loony bin. I think humanity is a lot less well adjusted on average than we like to admit, though.

[Sondrelk]

+ disc feels good so far, shadow has never been so fun to play, FINALLY they gave up on the shitcluster voidform
+ artworks are wonderful, even green questing gear looked great on my character
+ Torghast is pretty fun, layer 3 endboss was fairly challenging as disc
+ storytelling is great
- professions... they sounded good, but once again everything interesting is put behind timegates or rep grinds, turning many of the options like item level boost pointless
- questing experience is SOOO ON RAIL, there is zero replay value, I'm already afraid of playing alts, all these unskippable RPs and escorts are going to kill me
- all the dungeons were meh or just plain annoying/boring so far
- some WQs are just too long

The levelling has 2 distinct paths, the RP-on-rails edition is only mandatory the first time, on all your alts you will get the choice of either doing that route again, or instantly completing all the main story quests and instead level up via World Quests and sidequests.

[Baroclinic]

It's not too bad. Atleast the storyline/leveling. Starting to get a little old for me already at the end game. With titanforges gone, made it harder to reach the heroic queues. They added alot of content, but took away any convenience (have fun being chased by annoying trash everywhere).

About the best part was going though the entire 10 levels without swapping out nearly any gear.

[Matsumotto]

The thing is, there was always some kind of reward for doing that content. In TBC you did get badges of justice, in wotlk Emblems, in Legion there was artifact power so you always felt like there is a reason to grind. Im really missing this. I thought Anima will be working like that, but with the research being gated by souls, its not working and even if you farm a lot of anima, you cant really use it...

I mean you are not forced to do shit, but on the other hand. Nothing is really rewarding...

Exactly what i'm feeling. WQs feel pretty terrible, with really bad rewards. The covenant sets have a crazy low base ilvl, it's like we're back to only doing dungeons and raids (or PvP) for gear, which is fine in a way, but maybe they should just remove the gear rewards from world quests if they are so extremely low.

[Dystemper]

Of my 8 friends still playing , 3 have already quit because classes still feel like shit and they hated the on rails leveling. The other 5 are mixed. 2 think it's it just so so but better than BFA. The rest are bored at 60 and hate Torghast and the Maw . But they all say the artwork is great , except the gear

[dacoolist]

It's lit, BUT - I can't say how much: we have to wait some time to find out. You can't judge an xpac by week 1, talk to me week 10

[Shadowferal]

The artistry has always been fairly well done. Although some of the ingame cinematics seem more cartoonish these days.

[razorpax]

It depends on how you liked BfA
There’s no constant grind
Gear has BiS instead of TF lottery
Professions are useful even inscription
Weekly quests like dungeons

No flight whistle
No “kill this one mob” dailies
Longer WQ
Fewer flight points
No mount in the maw unless you get the drop

[fatgunn]

My only complaint right now is the flight whistle being gone. I'm hoping the upgrades we get to the travel networks will at least alleviate that some.

[Chilela]

It's really too early to say how good the expansion is. Overall, I've been enjoying myself with it so far, but it's all new stuff. The question is can it remain enjoyable, something that BFA, for example, struggled with. But if you want "snap" takes:

The Good
The questing feels a tad more varied this time. There seems to be more breaks in the "2-3 quests, involving some combination of kill X mobs/kill a named mob/collect X items" pattern that Blizzard has become increasingly reliant on over the past few xpacs, usually with some sort of vehicle-based quest. It still does feel a bit formulaic, but not as much as BFA was.

Atmospherically, they did a solid job on the zones. Even if almost everything is thematically recycled (e.g. Maldraxxus being basically a modernized Plagueland zone), it's all done well enough where I can excuse it.

The randomness of Torghast feels like what IEs should have been. Even if RNG can only do so much, the floors in the tower are much more varied than the island maps, where only the mobs and clickables where altered on every different run of the same map. Apparently it's also a blast with friends, but that's just word-of-mouth from guildies .

Gear crafting professions are actually worthwhile again, after being basically dead for at least 2 expansions.

Speaking of gear, the lowered amount of RNGforging was a step in the right direction, even if it cost a lowered amount of drops.

And speaking of steps in the right direction, the Great Vault is a big upgrade from the Challenger's Cache of the past 2 expansions. I can at least say that without having touched one.

The Night Fae covenant theater quest is 11/10, and is more proof that Blizzard is at their best when they're poking fun at themselves (See also: The 2006 and 2010 April Fool's patch notes, before they started leaning more on WHACKY pop culture references)

The Bad
While this isn't at all the fault of this expansion's design, the economy has effectively become completely busted thanks to the increasing prominence of boosting communities. Great news for gatherers, but bad news for anyone intent on leveling crafting professions.

While I generally don't mind the thematics or mechanics of the new dungeons, they feel a bit trash-heavy compared to the past few expansions. Like Blizzard saw Motherlode and thought "Yeah, that's a good dungeon model". I have a feeling it was a choice made with M+ in mind, but I still can't say I'm the biggest fan.

WQs feel more "sloggy" than BFA's did. While part of this can be explained with poorer gear not allowing for huge, quick pulls, or flying being a thing, it feels like, even accounting for that, they just take a whole lot longer in general.

The Ugly
The number of systems, hoo boy. Even if someone goes into this expansion fresh, there's an obscene amount of things to soak in, especially this early on. It's probably on par with 8.3, and that was at least several months into BFA. I feel bad for new players just stepping into this xpac.

Staying power is a huge concern. Just because something's enjoyable early on, doesn't mean it will still be enjoyable weeks, if not months out. BFA's features suffered particularly badly from this, and why the early ones were more or less abandoned mid-xpac. The biggest concern in this regard is Torghast, which will be a central point of character progression for a long time to come.

All in all, a good start, with some room to keep things that way. Get back to me in a couple months.

[schwarzkopf]

wow, which spec is that?

Arcane Mage ... it is just the last boss in floor 6/difficulty 3 that is unbeatable.

Up to the boss is hard, but I got to it in around 90 minutes... with 5 deaths available, but not a chance in hell of getting him down.

- - - Updated - - -

My only complaint right now is the flight whistle being gone.

Been replaced by other systems ... no issues so far with that.