Soo...Is Shadowlands any good?

[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.

[Gorsameth]

Mage is one of the worse soloing specs for something like Torghast I bet.
No self healing, long cd interrupt.

[Spike`]

not feeling it, almost no desire to login to play it

alot of it his boring, Blizzard seems to make this expansion easy for alts and the mains be done for the week (with is great!) but i dont even finished the things to done on the main let alone start on alts, simply not feeling it to play

seems that shadowlands will be indeed my last expansion, BFA killed alot for me (only played until 8.1) and shadowlands if they dont improve will be the final nail

[Nyel]

Been replaced by other systems ...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

That are only existent in your Covenant zone and you first have to unlock them step by step. In all other zones traversal is bad with only few flight masters around and getting to them is, depending on the zone, super annoying because of the terrain (Revendreth and its flight masters on top of mountains or castles). And you know what's the worst? That every flight path between the different zones is traveling over Oribos and takes forever because of that. I understand that the zones aren't connected to each other, but why didn't they make traveling between zones just... better than this.

[vsb]

I mean think what you want, but Warlords of Draenor and Cataclysm are considered to be some of the worst expansions by most players lol

Most players are stupid and their opinion does not correlate with reality. You should have your own opinion about everything.

[Hiromant]

not feeling it, almost no desire to login to play it

alot of it his boring, Blizzard seems to make this expansion easy for alts and the mains be done for the week (with is great!) but i dont even finished the things to done on the main let alone start on alts, simply not feeling it to play

seems that shadowlands will be indeed my last expansion, BFA killed alot for me (only played until 8.1) and shadowlands if they dont improve will be the final nail

Same. I slogged through to max level with my warlock whose pet has an AOE attack but no more AOE taunt - a great combination -, looked at the sheer number of systems and grinds in front of me, and logged out. Somehow Legion and even BFA kept me playing for months.

[Soon-TM]

maybe they should just remove the gear rewards from world quests if they are so extremely low.

Not so fast my dude, they help me to level my Enchanting. That gear does have its uses

[sensei]

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.

Or maybe like a lot of shit in this expansion Blizzard designed it to work with flying in place, but oh that's right we don't fucking have flying until later! Which is why Bastion for example (aka Mac'Aree 2.0) is such a fucking nightmare to travel around. This isn't a bad expansion, just a rushed expansion with a lot of the rough edges very clearly laid out for all to see. Like all the quests and rares that award vendor trash. If someone is thinking of getting it or resubbing at this point I'd recommend not doing so and waiting until patch 9.1.

[RaZz0r]

Im having a blast i can mainly focus on the things i enjoy the most there are hardly any " forced grinds " that you have to do or you will fall behind.
The only daily grind that is semi related to player power is daily maw run ( takes like 30 minutes tops ) WQ's Emissary 2.0 covenant stuff.
Including reputations are like 98% cosmetic with a few profession recipes.
So if your capable of figuring out what you want to do in game without having blizzard making a daily chore list for you then your going to have a blast.
( it takes some time getting used too for some people as blizzard has held there hand for like the last few x-packs )

[Zeusy]

Great so far. Finished layer 3 floor 6 on 4 characters, soon to be 6 and I'm ready to start mythics/honor farm when the new week comes.

I've really enjoyed the questing and story so far. Only downside for me has been the thread of fate being so scattered in ardenweald. I feel as though this zone was great on campaign but really weird when you don't have the campaign guiding you to the right spot.

A little confused why people are having confusion with the "systems". Hitting 60 and doing torghast/maw dailies is the only real requirement. Callings are just emissary 2.0 and the cov upgrades = farm anima to buy the optional boosts. I didn't play or read anything about beta and spent like 15minutes at max leveling doing a little reading and the game seems preetty simple so far.

[hulkgor]

So far, so fun. Lots of it.

Wish we had a couple more dungeons though, 8 seems very few for such a long time.