Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[kaminaris]

BFA is essentially Legion 2.0:
- It kept the borrowed power system. azerite armor = artifact weapon, azerite power = artifact power, essence = relics
- No new end game form, M+ is still exactly the same as BFA

BfA introduced two new game modes warfronts and islands which were never fully polished or iterated. Could have been much better but I had fun with islands especially with good items like NUKLAR target painter - shit was lit.

Then visions came in and it was new solo challenge end-game mode for solo players that ALSO rewarded gear.

SL didn't bother to improve it. Instead, scrapped it and introduced just torghast which offers no progression to your character.

[Kel_Sceptic]

My kids are 2 and 5. It's been trivial to balance classic and my children. I raid once a week, maybe once every other week when I'm busy. It's a few hours one night. The commitment is a joke compared to retail raiding.

Thats when you do content that is known for 14-15 years Just like when you mark a raid from cleaning to farming.
I remember how, even tough our guild had the 3 raiding nights per week, we all raided 5 nights. Cause who the hell doesnt want to be in the raid when we down the end boss for the first time.
I'm glad is working for you, guilding and raiding even with younglings, I on the other hand don't want to mix it.
I remember when our guild lost it's main tank in SSC, because his wife gave birth, he said goodbye, and we never seen him again
Most of my real life friends don't play WoW anymore just because they got married, actually some of them barelly playing games anymore.

LFR and LFD aren't the same thing. LFR came out in patch 4.3. So, this is the second smug comment in one post where you were factually wrong.

I get it that LFR released in Cata, but DF released during WotLK. Dungeon Finder, this is how it is called right now this is how it has been renamed then in 3.3
Even me being right on DF part and wrong on LFR part, OR you being right on the LFR part and wrong on the DF part, it still shows when stuff started to happen. I was playing WotLK when DF was introduced, and I used it.
Hell, remember Perky Pug awarded after you grouped with 100 random players (Looking for Multitudes)? I got the achivement on 28.12.2009. So ... it must be true ) BTW: who's being smug?

Again, this is a triviality. "Anyone want to run anything?" in guild chat and in two minutes we know if there are people to do it. I play the game. You don't, so stop telling me what it's like. I've NEVER taken more than 10 minutes of work to form a group in all of classic.

You are playing classic, right ? That is exactly why I said it is good that we have Classic, since there sure are people that want to play the game without all the systems.
BUT at the same time, there are more people that like the systems or NEED the systems.

If it were for me, I would create a realm for every expansion, let people play what they like.
MoP was one of the best Arena PvP expansions, from my PoV. I would go create a character there without a problem.

All of your arguments are based on a hypothetical game that you've invented in your head. CAN you sit around looking for a group for an hour if you want to be an anti-social weirdo and refuse to join a guild? I suppose so, but I really don't find it difficult to ask if anyone wants to go and then move on with my life in either direction depending on the answer. You are making this trivial thing seem like the most oppressive, complicated thing in the world.

This is how complex this has been for me:
I start playing classic.
I run into someone who has a guild.
I join their guild.
The rest of my leveling, whenever I log on, I quickly ask if anyone wants to do X, Y, or Z before I go questing alone.
If within 2 minutes nothing is happening, I go quest.

This is the thing you are acting like is going to burn your ability to interact with your children to the grounds.

Hell, maybe I've become more anti-social as time past, that may be a thing and I can't argue that. I've created my guild in 2014 and it justs accomodates my alts, nobody else.
But, MoP was the last expansion I've raided organized in a Guild and that was also the moment I've realised I don't like raiding anymore.

But, moreover I play the game as I want, and Shadowlands suits me more then all other expansions, tbh.
The game, overall, follows the majority of players, even changes that are not wellcome by the MAJORITY are reverted (remember WoD Flying).
Even switching from artifact/azerite power to somthing simpler might have exactly the same cause.

Time will tell, till then the real good thing is that you are enjoying Classic, and I am enjoying Shadowlands As I said in the past post, the sad part is the ones that don't enjoy either.

Well, I have said it already, but I can explain it again: So far, SL has no fundamental change or new things compared to Legion or BFA.

What I mean about "fundamental new things"? You can consider it as totally new system or end game in wow.

e.g.:
- TBC introduced arena, which brings a totally new aspect to the game.
- Cata introduced LFR. No matter how many people loves it or hate it, it is a new way and choice to let more playerbase to see the raids.
- Legion introduced M+, it is a brand new end game form today that a lot of PvE players enjoys.
- Legion also introduced the max level progression system and borrowed power system (aka. artifact and AP)

Whats wrong with not introducing "anything" new ? )
Counter Strike is the same since 1998 and people play the sh17 out of it.
Dota 2 is the same since 2003, and people play the sh17 out of it.

The content itself is not worse than Legion or BFA, but in today's fast changing gaming industry, it is hard to keep playerbase interested with the same thing in 3 expansions.

My earlier examples tend to say it might not be true.

Personally I like the addition of Soulbinds and Conduits, even though I was reticient at start. It creates the REAL posibility to see different
builds for the same class and spec.
I mean, atm there are people who play with Niya as a soulbind, and people who play with Dreamweaver (for the seed immortality). And the conduits really create a playstyle that suits each player. If you want to play more agressive, you go for the dps enhacements, if you want to play more defensive, you go for that. It is the 1st system in years that really made people play the SAME SPEC in different ways, and that for WoW is a BIIIIIIG change.

Garrison in WoD was a new thing and people considered it SH17 SOLO anti-social system.
WotLK introduced us to phasing ))) remember that good system ?
What did MoP introduced ? Scenarios ... were those good ? If so why were they removed ?

You realise that you and kaminaris are both comparing 1 month of an expansion with 2 years of every other expansion, right ?

Time will tell if it will succed or not, but at least from my PoV, I rather have no system at all then braindead afk-Warfronts. Sure, lets make Warfronts quality level stuff so we can ignore even more class balance.
Island Expeditions were not my favorite, but at least that system was working as intended and some people enjoyed it.

[OMGTwitchTV]

In English, any noun may be verbed. Although, as Calvin observed, "verbing weirds language".

Correct, but the noun is Shill, as is its verb.

[NineSpine]

Thats when you do content that is known for 14-15 years Just like when you mark a raid from cleaning to farming.
I remember how, even tough our guild had the 3 raiding nights per week, we all raided 5 nights. Cause who the hell doesnt want to be in the raid when we down the end boss for the first time.
I'm glad is working for you, guilding and raiding even with younglings, I on the other hand don't want to mix it.
I remember when our guild lost it's main tank in SSC, because his wife gave birth, he said goodbye, and we never seen him again
Most of my real life friends don't play WoW anymore just because they got married, actually some of them barelly playing games anymore.




I get it that LFR released in Cata, but DF released during WotLK. Dungeon Finder, this is how it is called right now this is how it has been renamed then in 3.3
Even me being right on DF part and wrong on LFR part, OR you being right on the LFR part and wrong on the DF part, it still shows when stuff started to happen. I was playing WotLK when DF was introduced, and I used it.
Hell, remember Perky Pug awarded after you grouped with 100 random players (Looking for Multitudes)? I got the achivement on 28.12.2009. So ... it must be true ) BTW: who's being smug?


You are playing classic, right ? That is exactly why I said it is good that we have Classic, since there sure are people that want to play the game without all the systems.
BUT at the same time, there are more people that like the systems or NEED the systems.

If it were for me, I would create a realm for every expansion, let people play what they like.
MoP was one of the best Arena PvP expansions, from my PoV. I would go create a character there without a problem.






Hell, maybe I've become more anti-social as time past, that may be a thing and I can't argue that. I've created my guild in 2014 and it justs accomodates my alts, nobody else.
But, MoP was the last expansion I've raided organized in a Guild and that was also the moment I've realised I don't like raiding anymore.

But, moreover I play the game as I want, and Shadowlands suits me more then all other expansions, tbh.
The game, overall, follows the majority of players, even changes that are not wellcome by the MAJORITY are reverted (remember WoD Flying).
Even switching from artifact/azerite power to somthing simpler might have exactly the same cause.

Time will tell, till then the real good thing is that you are enjoying Classic, and I am enjoying Shadowlands As I said in the past post, the sad part is the ones that don't enjoy either.




Whats wrong with not introducing "anything" new ? )
Counter Strike is the same since 1998 and people play the sh17 out of it.
Dota 2 is the same since 2003, and people play the sh17 out of it.


My earlier examples tend to say it might not be true.

Personally I like the addition of Soulbinds and Conduits, even though I was reticient at start. It creates the REAL posibility to see different
builds for the same class and spec.
I mean, atm there are people who play with Niya as a soulbind, and people who play with Dreamweaver (for the seed immortality). And the conduits really create a playstyle that suits each player. If you want to play more agressive, you go for the dps enhacements, if you want to play more defensive, you go for that. It is the 1st system in years that really made people play the SAME SPEC in different ways, and that for WoW is a BIIIIIIG change.

Garrison in WoD was a new thing and people considered it SH17 SOLO anti-social system.
WotLK introduced us to phasing ))) remember that good system ?
What did MoP introduced ? Scenarios ... were those good ? If so why were they removed ?

You realise that you and kaminaris are both comparing 1 month of an expansion with 2 years of every other expansion, right ?

Time will tell if it will succed or not, but at least from my PoV, I rather have no system at all then braindead afk-Warfronts. Sure, lets make Warfronts quality level stuff so we can ignore even more class balance.
Island Expeditions were not my favorite, but at least that system was working as intended and some people enjoyed it.

Your continued insistence that classic requires some insane time investment and retail doesn't simply isn't in line with reality. I don't need to constantly log into classic and do my daily, weekly, etc. activities. I can take a month off, come back, and be fine. There isn't anything to really catch up on. Retail is where the endless, nonstop, crushing grind of FOMO kicks in.

Furthermore, your insistence that it must be working because its new is absurd. WoW has seen a marked decline over the recent years, and BFA was regarded as a complete failure, as was WoD. Legion is the only expansion we can point to in SIX YEARS that appears to have been a success. Shadowlands exists in a vacuum right now because of the covid situation so time will have to tell, but in all likelihood it is going to see the insane falloff that every recent expansion has seen after the initial wave.

Classic is the only overperformance we have seen for wow since at least MoP. Retail is a failure, and that's why they've resorted to all kinds of convoluted metrics rather than... subscriptions. That's why they were doing the largest scale server mergers in the history of the game right before shadowlands launched, while classic continues to chug along with healthy populations.

[Nachtigal]

100,000,000,000% agree OP. Shadowlands is absolutely fantastic!

[Kel_Sceptic]

Your continued insistence that classic requires some insane time investment and retail doesn't simply isn't in line with reality. I don't need to constantly log into classic and do my daily, weekly, etc. activities. I can take a month off, come back, and be fine. There isn't anything to really catch up on. Retail is where the endless, nonstop, crushing grind of FOMO kicks in.

Are you even trying, givit a shot at understanding what I'm trying to say ? English is not my native language, but it surely isn't yours either.
I never fk said classic is hard or that raiding is more time consumign then retail, hell classic is easy, since ... exactly no dailys, no new content, everything that the classic content has to offer has been discovered, analyzed and overanalyzed 10000 times, perfected, min-maxed and all that. Jesus, I even said "OFC you raid 1 night per week, since all that content is 15years OLD".

But indeed it is time consuming when it comes to traveling from one point to another, leveling and so on. As I remember corectly, it took me 30-35min to fly from Wintergrasp to Tanaris. In retail I use one of the 2 HS and take the portal to either Tanaris or Mount Hyjal. In classic every fight with 2 mobs is followed by a food drink break and so on.

As for the raiding scene, every new expansion gets new raids, new tactics, it requires a learning curve even for the best players in the world (check Mythic Raiding and the race for World 1st).

The only thing I've said is that if it were for me, I would do a realm for every expansion, even pristine realm, with no phasing, no sharding, no cross realm, what ever, so that YOU can play that content aswell. I don't care, as long as there's a realm with all Quality of Life features that WoW has now, I really don't mind if they do 1 realm with pristine vanilla conditions for every expansion released.

I take Classic for what it is, I've experienced it and it doesn't suits me anymore, life's to fast for me to play WoW in Classic.

I am not a raider since 2014, I repeat, I play this game as a multiplayer-queue-arena game, not as an MMO, so all the stuff that happend in Shadowlands fits me right.

I never said Classic raiding differs from any other expansion's raiding part, when it comes to commitment, guild and so on.
All the raiding in every expansion requires the same 3 nights raiding per week.

You argue with me because you seem to be one of those "Classic is the best WoW experience! You others not playing classic are plebs" kind of guy.
To be clear, I'm the kind of guy that "played all expansions with their pluses and minuses, and stopped paying a subscription when either real life stuff happend (~1year during Cata), or when WoW's expansion gaved me harder times then enjoyable ones (~1year during BFA). And I don't argue, i debate whether Shadowlands has more pluses then minuses, and how it compares to the rest of WoW's expansions.

For me, the only BIG and ONLY MINUS for Shadowlands is the difference between PvE and PvP gear and I've said that a couple of times. But compared to alot of BIG PLUSES it has for me, it is ok.

Furthermore, your insistence that it must be working because its new is absurd. WoW has seen a marked decline over the recent years, and BFA was regarded as a complete failure, as was WoD. Legion is the only expansion we can point to in SIX YEARS that appears to have been a success. Shadowlands exists in a vacuum right now because of the covid situation so time will have to tell, but in all likelihood it is going to see the insane falloff that every recent expansion has seen after the initial wave.

Classic is the only overperformance we have seen for wow since at least MoP. Retail is a failure, and that's why they've resorted to all kinds of convoluted metrics rather than... subscriptions. That's why they were doing the largest scale server mergers in the history of the game right before shadowlands launched, while classic continues to chug along with healthy populations

Dude, you are either hight af, or you must have read the posts of ashblond or kaminaris, and answered to me about this kind of stuff, since I've never praised BFA. Hell, I haven't praised Legion's artifact power, either.

People expecting WoW to climb back to 12milion players are probably disconnected from reality.
No matter how good WoW was or is, it will never reach or sustain the top it had in WotLK.
MMO is a dying genre overall, just like Utopia died just like IRC Chat died and so on. Just like other genres that were hot once but now they are just a niche.

[kaminaris]

Your continued insistence that classic requires some insane time investment and retail doesn't simply isn't in line with reality. I don't need to constantly log into classic and do my daily, weekly, etc. activities. I can take a month off, come back, and be fine. There isn't anything to really catch up on. Retail is where the endless, nonstop, crushing grind of FOMO kicks in.

Furthermore, your insistence that it must be working because its new is absurd. WoW has seen a marked decline over the recent years, and BFA was regarded as a complete failure, as was WoD. Legion is the only expansion we can point to in SIX YEARS that appears to have been a success. Shadowlands exists in a vacuum right now because of the covid situation so time will have to tell, but in all likelihood it is going to see the insane falloff that every recent expansion has seen after the initial wave.

Classic is the only overperformance we have seen for wow since at least MoP. Retail is a failure, and that's why they've resorted to all kinds of convoluted metrics rather than... subscriptions. That's why they were doing the largest scale server mergers in the history of the game right before shadowlands launched, while classic continues to chug along with healthy populations.

I think you drifted away from reality too. BfA wasn't seen as failure, no, it was fairly good expansion, just the story sucked more than usual. It was legion that you had to do a lot of "catching up", bfa you could pretty much jump on fresh character and get to decent power level in 2 weeks.

Yes you don't need to constantly log in to classic since there is just nothing to do there.

Shadowlands could have been that expansion if not for absolutely retarded loot system that once you fall out, you probably won't ever catch up.

You have also not idea what FOMO is because you are not missing anything actually, gear is and will still be there.

WoW has been in decline over the years because it reached decline product stage, there is absolutely nothing that could ever stop that.

Classic isn't any overperformance, it barely holds up now after all the staged content has been out. Neither was MoP which was overall pretty mediocre expansion, didn't "save" shit.

[Jastall]

It is only the 1st month. Any expansion has been praised by players as good/great during its 1st month. It doesn't mean much.

Check it again in 2 months.

Don't buy that anymore. It was true for WoD because it ultimately lacked content outside of raids so the shine wore off after a time. The mere existence of Torghast, WQs, the Maw (such as it is) and M+ means Shadowlands won't. By contrast, BfA was already very much under fire during its first month, especially for its iteration of AP, Warfronts, aggressive mob scaling and most of all Azerite armor. I haven't seen anywhere near the amount of complaints towards Shadowlands, hell people complained more about WoD's first month and Legion.

[OMGTwitchTV]

I never said anything about your post being against the rules did I? I guess I have to agree with your signature, common sense is not so common. Btw I do not elaborate on blog opinions and thats why I can't agree or disagree with you. You have every right to feel how you want about the game I just don't see why we had to know.

Do you comment on all "blog posts" you are confused by or disagree with? Or do you simply pass them by and find something new to read? Just curious if you were not interested in my opinion or the topic why you took the time to pop in and comment in the style you did.

[Evolixe]

I don't yet know if it has TBC or LK beat for me, but bar those.. its definitely the best one in the last decade.

[Masternap]

It's actually rapidly descending the ladder for me. I've loved it at first, but I'm at a point where there's pretty much nothing to do. And everything there is to do was nice at first and annoying at best after a few weeks.

[pansertjald]

It's actually rapidly descending the ladder for me. I've loved it at first, but I'm at a point where there's pretty much nothing to do. And everything there is to do was nice at first and annoying at best after a few weeks.

Same for me. this XP quickly became a raid or die or do M+ XP sadly

[ashblond]

As I have said, players will get bored of this expansion faster than ever.

[rebecca191]

It's actually rapidly descending the ladder for me. I've loved it at first, but I'm at a point where there's pretty much nothing to do. And everything there is to do was nice at first and annoying at best after a few weeks.

Yeah, at first I thought it was better than BFA, but now all I do is raid and do a M+ every week. Everything else is too annoying. I sometimes think "If I just had flying, I'd do this....." but nothing is worth the current time investment.

[Kokolums]

SL will go down as the worst xpac of all time. It is worse than WoD. Both WoD and SL are raid-or-die. The difference is SL doesn't drop loot in raids. SL must immediately revert the loot changes and bring back titanforging, warforging and coins, so there will soon be a mass exodus. But that's just to get back to WoD level.

This xpac is totally broken.

[kaminaris]

Its not like descending the ladder anymore, its sliding down rapidly like in this gif:


Don't get me started on loot, I already said everything I think about it. But today I logged in to do "daily stuff" and said "fuq it".
So instead i logged in first on my shitalt druid to finish stuff for my addon. Took me good 4 hours.
When I finally finished, i had some serious thought about just ignoring this day. But I overcame that, logged in on my main, did some covenant stuff while constantly looking at 2nd monitor twitch. Couldn't focus, couldn't push myself thru this.

Then calling, which had one mildly interesting battle pet world quest. After that, opened up LFD, made group for other 2 WQs and finished them while being semi afk.

Then maw took me another hour, not because of travel or anything. Because i made breaks every couple minutes checking out streams/websites etc.

I totally cannot get motivated for anything. Literally anything else seems more interesting, even writing addon for wow.
I won't take breaks for game totally (because writing addon is still damn fun) but i might take break from everything else that game has to offer).

[Kokolums]

I just can't get over how the ONLY thing propping up WoW was excellent raid design. And they actually went out a BROKE raids in SL! I mean what the hell are they thinking??? There should at a minimum be a fence around raid design where they say "Do NOT touch this!" And they completely wrecked it instead.

[prolonged]

It's actually rapidly descending the ladder for me. I've loved it at first, but I'm at a point where there's pretty much nothing to do. And everything there is to do was nice at first and annoying at best after a few weeks.

This. Played alot the first two weeks. Enjoyed it, leveling was great then we hit the heavily gated end game. I enjoyed covenants at first, now i find it to be another chore like grinding AP. The maw is cool in theory, horrid design. Torghast needs iteration, I'm also not the biggest fan of locking player power behind a player economy(I have enough gold, i can afford it). PVP is about the only thing i log in to do(Even pvp reward upgrades are locked behind covenants lul) I don't think shadowlands will hit the top 3 for me. Wotlk > BC > Legion. They try far to hard to be "innovative" and it usually just leads to making a muck of things. Simple is better. Examples See vanilla-WOTLK. Legion wasn't simple per say, but it hit all the right design cues.

[mrkhanpk]

is this really happening?

[glowpipe]

I had a shitton of players on my friends list come back for SL. Only time it took them shorter to stop playing again was with classic. People stayed far longer with bfa and legion then they did for SL. Officers of my guild is already having problems finding the motivation to log in and do shit like m+. My m+ team is constantly lacking 2 players cause they cba. And inbefore "its xmas",no they are online playing other games, so its not because they aren't home. Almost all classes i play now is just the same shit over and over. Nothing new, its the same old stale shit. And thats the main reason my friends are leaving in droves. They don't wanna play the same classes with no changes 3 expansions in a row. And inbefore "just change class" They did. My m+ tank played litteraly every tanking class in legion and again in bfa. Now its the third expansion where they have hardly changed