Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Lorgar Aurelian]

His normal salary may be lower, but he did receive a bonus worth 30 million, and had no qualms about firing hundreds of people. Do you actually, truly believe people in such positions don't abuse and play the system to gain as much as possible, and are totally fine with screwing everyone else over for it? The only reason he took a pay cut was because the negative backlash could hurt the bottom line of the company, and thus his ability to get more in the future. I normally agree to attribute mistakes or bad moves to stupidity rather than malicious intent, but people in such positions as kotick aren't stupid.

That’s just not a realistic. Blizzards value has skyrocketed 800 layoffs in mop didn’t stop it Diablo immortal didn’t stop it blitzchunk didn’t stop it so on and so on.

Absolutely no one who evaluates this kind of stuff is going to agree that Kotick getting paid what ever amount will effect there earnings when much bigger controversy haven’t stopped there skyrocketing at all.

As to the layoffs them selfs that’s just how the real world works, when your no longer supporting or hosting destiny you don’t need any of there staff when you can’t host live events for over two years and you have already held onto the event team for over a year with them doing no work you have to face reality. Sure it’s nice to dream of a world where hundreds of people are paid to do nothing for years on end but no company works like that any where in the world.

[sam86]

His normal salary may be lower, but he did receive a bonus worth 30 million, and had no qualms about firing hundreds of people. Do you actually, truly believe people in such positions don't abuse and play the system to gain as much as possible, and are totally fine with screwing everyone else over for it? The only reason he took a pay cut was because the negative backlash could hurt the bottom line of the company, and thus his ability to get more in the future. I normally agree to attribute mistakes or bad moves to stupidity rather than malicious intent, but people in such positions as kotick aren't stupid.

don't bother he is a strong blizz a88 kisser since years, he is convinced that if u fire 8% then 10% next year of entire work staff, the morality of every worker in company will not be effected, not to mention that 10% is purely janitors with not a single person in developing games
he is the type that Kodick loves the most, the guy flat out stated he ban his own grandchild from video games and wants to remove fun from video games, yet he sees no problem that he leads a video game company
It's no surprise that blizz is going downhill since years
And btw assume he actually did reduce his salary (yes i question that, activision does have amazing PR team), it still nothing in compare to years of getting full payed + bonuses, not to mention reason he claims he fired first time at least (the 8%) was because company can't provide sustain salary for them, notice that the entire 8% of staff still are nothing in compare to his semi-yearly bonus alone, and it was in record-breaking profit year too (also tbh, with diablo immortal fiasco, no one was expecting that next year will be at same profit)

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Legion did have a lot of content, some of it even good (Suramar city). What it also had, was the true start of endless grinding for a borrowed power system and the start of world quests. WQ for me, signified the death of dedicated open world content beyond a single questing/leveling playthrough and doing near-meaningless chores tasked to us by some annoying talking head, which could'd be toggled off. Some players also liked the story in legion (it did have good moments) but I found Illidan overbearing and boring.

Legion has its greats and its bads, same for wrath
I consider wrath best exp, but if wrath had only 1 mistake (LFG), that mistake alone is so deadly it can't be forgiven, it is reason n1 that killed social in wow
Legion had many problems that general players didn't see: the idea of borrowed power, I LOVED artifacts, but i question if i'd played Legion that much (I only stopped 3 months total in entire Legion cycle) if i knew that my Ashbringer will be flushed in toilet like sh8t, I literally subbed to wow in WoD when i saw artifact of druid, and i don't play druid, that's how much i loved artifacts
I was expecting artifacts to stay, at least in their own exp, but to destroy them that u can't even gain any AP and use them in Legion zones, that was overkill and it really hurt me

[Lorgar Aurelian]

don't bother he is a strong blizz a88 kisser since years, he is convinced that if u fire 8% then 10% next year of entire work staff, the morality of every worker in company will not be effected, not to mention that 10% is purely janitors with not a single person in developing games

I get that reality hurts I get that you want to
Blindly rage and make things up because if you had to face the facts it doesn’t paint things in such a doom and gloom light but you should really take a break and come back to the real world with the rest of us.

Besides snark though.

Blizzard didn’t lay off 8 or 10% of there staff they didn’t even lay off 1% of there staff this year and I think only broke 4% total with both rounds combined.

The people they laid off are also less useful to development then janitors. As for moral there’s no reason to think the developers would be devastated by people they have likely never met or met infrequently if people collapsed like that every time a company laid off less then 1% of there workers in totally unrelated positions no company would be able to function.

But again you should join us in the real world it’s a nice place.

[Lora]

at least we actually have variety, instead of seeing same faces almost every match
not to mention there isn't a balance already either, check OW tournament, every match is mirror, if control point, both teams exact same, if attack/def, attack team is exact copy of next attack team, and same for defense
so yeah OW has 'balance', because u don't have options in first place

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this is first time i see Cata considered worst exp since BFA release
WoD/BFA are always considered the worst, didn't see cata name since years

i thoroughly enjoyed WoD and BFA. They had rocky launches 100% but they were enjoyable throughout the entire expansion. Cataclysm was just not fun.

[sam86]

i thoroughly enjoyed WoD and BFA. They had rocky launches 100% but they were enjoyable throughout the entire expansion. Cataclysm was just not fun.

guess u cared about pvp after wrath?
i remember cata pvp was one of worst (if not worst), frost mage can fight entire raid of non frost mages, druid cat pounce u dots and u dead while he run around u in bear form, and warrior stack a buff and 1 shot anyone after he stacks it
I still consider wod pvp worst however, with how it was purely humans + dwarf shaman/nelf druid, at least WoD u can have mage alliance or horde, WoD if u not human u are fucked

[ro9ue]

Every time I see this thread bumped with it's title I lol.

[Lawlhero]

Talk about a thread that didn't age well.

[Soon-TM]

Talk about a thread that didn't age well.

Clearly not what OP expected, since he/she hasn't bothered to post anymore for quite some time lol.

[Osmeric]

Shadowlands is rapidly climbing the ladder of popularity...


...at Blizzard's competitors.

[Pheraz]

cataclysm as one of the worst? lol

Both WoD and BoA have both been far worse than cata for the overall playability of the game for the greater majority of the playerbase. Even legion could be considered here, were world quests killed the need for structured reps (rep base+ lore development) and saw the first borrowed powers system come.

SL is just a continuation of wow in the state that WoD+legion left it, while just becoming worse, and as long as the devs keep this style of design for wow it will never get any better.

I disagree on both of you. Cata was great and Bfa too.

But I agree that they need to come up with something better than world of worldqiestcraft and yetanotherglyphsystemthatisjustcalleddifferently

Also the music is very bad and boring in SL. Just listened to the Bfa soundtrack again. So intense

[Sanguinerd]

Tbh the game has never felt this empty and I doubt Covid is entirely to blame for the drought either.

[Pheraz]

Buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. Explain what the "soul" of the game is. What the hell is a "luster"? How csn a game be lifeless? SL has everything Legion, BfA and previous expansions had. What is exactly is missing? Classes are in better shape right now than in BfA and Legion at this point of the expansion. Try to be objective. You not liking the game is fine, maybe the theme is not for you, maybe you don't have friends to play with atm. But at least try to argue for your position. Just insulting and calling names does not do your opinion a favour.

Okay let's be objective. But first you need to settle down to a target part of the player base. expansions weren't good at everything. Since I'm playing very casual since years I can only speak for this group. Can't speak for not-lfr raids or mythic plus.

- the level design is confusing, and hard to get to different parts of the map, I guess the intention was to generate some sense of depth but this didn't end up well
- the art team also did better before, sure it was great to look at new stuff for some months but after this everything starts to look very synthetic and un-warcrafty ... Almost like plastic
- there is not much to do outside of LFR for casuals. WQs almost have no items on them and if they are very bad. No warfront, no islands, no mage tower, only Torghast which comes in the next point
- torghast is very boring, unrewarding and intranspatent, hard to understand the game design intension
- the theme took existing themes and made them more dull: vampires but not really, the scourge but less creepy , forest stuff but everything is blue. The only exception could be the blue angels from Kyrian
- huge travel time in the zones but also between them, because they are in fact completely disconnected from each other which is very contra the open world idea
- covenants should bring RPG elements but all they brought were some spells and yet another glyph system but also the annoying weeklies you need to pick up this X-Pac for no reason other than being different

I think I could go on all day

[Tronski]

Not sure if this was stated or not, but r/agedlikemilk to the OP to be honest. I quit this expansion quicker than Warlords. That speaks enough on its own, for me. You can't package cool lore and fun story with tortuous gameplay and expect record levels of players to sign up for that. No thanks. The game is more chore driven for the lowest form of rewards possible, capitalizing on intentionally poor design with moderate 'fixes' to trick the 80% that they are 'listening' and 'responding' to player feedback.

The solutions aren't even solutions, they're just the same bullshit with more steps.

Troll.

WoD was great. It just wasn't the unbalanced colorful mess you got used to in MoP.

[Soon-TM]

Troll.

WoD was great. It just wasn't the unbalanced colorful mess you got used to in MoP.

Calls others trolls.

States that WoD was "great".

Hmmm...

[Glorious Leader]

It feels weird to have wod and legion classed as the same.. wod was an expansion that brought more casual content to the game then arguably any other from implementing treasures , the best leveling experience seen in the game even now, mythic dungeons, and the most powerful catch up currently in the game along with reworked daily quests.

Wods failure was ignoring human psychology... the second they had the garrison reward + one difficulty gear for free once a week all of that content in essence might as well ceased to exist.

Legion had an annoying grind system but its sheer breath of content seemed to work for most people.

The fact that you have no idea what actually constitutes casual friendly content is about the only thing that you've described here.

[dagonar]

I feel like Shadow lands is a load of patch zones thrown together. I really don't like the fact that each zone is disconnected as this detracts from the very essence of WoW that brought me in all those years ago. It is a complete design change.

Don't really enjoy the levelling either, why do I have to spend 15 hours completing quest gameplay (which is quite boring) until I get to the actual game that I will be playing for the next 2 years?

But mostly it's the disconnected zones and the feeling that I don't really care about this 'place' and spending two year battling through it.

[Relapses]

Don't really enjoy the levelling either, why do I have to spend 15 hours completing quest gameplay (which is quite boring) until I get to the actual game that I will be playing for the next 2 years?

Uh, Threads of Fate is a thing... you do know that, right?

[Celista]

OP's post did not age well. I've been barely playing, feels like too much of a grind. Been pvping with lower level alts.

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Tbh the game has never felt this empty and I doubt Covid is entirely to blame for the drought either.

Agreed, it feels a lot like the game did in the content drought leading up to SL. Perhaps worse.

[Lora]

guess u cared about pvp after wrath?
i remember cata pvp was one of worst (if not worst), frost mage can fight entire raid of non frost mages, druid cat pounce u dots and u dead while he run around u in bear form, and warrior stack a buff and 1 shot anyone after he stacks it
I still consider wod pvp worst however, with how it was purely humans + dwarf shaman/nelf druid, at least WoD u can have mage alliance or horde, WoD if u not human u are fucked

didnt give a single fuck about pvp.

[LordVargK]

Okay let's be objective. But first you need to settle down to a target part of the player base. expansions weren't good at everything. Since I'm playing very casual since years I can only speak for this group. Can't speak for not-lfr raids or mythic plus.

I was mainly comparing SL to BfA and Legion, as those are the "new" WoW expansions that all have similar gameplay concepts and are a contrast to WoD and before.

- the level design is confusing, and hard to get to different parts of the map, I guess the intention was to generate some sense of depth but this didn't end up well

I partly agree. The areas where the world bosses are, are needlessly annoying to get to, because you have to run past hordes of other mobs. But that's about the only thing really more annoying than before. Legion had imo even worse zones. Highmountain stands out, but Valsharah and Stormheim were also terrible to navigate in.
BfA had better zones in that regard, but it also had the abomination that was called Nazjatar. Single worst zone to navigate in in WoW, even with flying.

- the art team also did better before, sure it was great to look at new stuff for some months but after this everything starts to look very synthetic and un-warcrafty ... Almost like plastic

That's highly subjective. I can't agree with you on that at all. The "real" warcrafty look died with Cataclysm anyways. Since then every weapon looks like it was made out of stone, and every armor made from wood and cloth. Also Revendreth is a masterpiece of art.

- there is not much to do outside of LFR for casuals. WQs almost have no items on them and if they are very bad. No warfront, no islands, no mage tower, only Torghast which comes in the next point

- well true, but what was there in Legion and BfA? Magetower was not released at the start of the expansion, WF and IE I will comment on in the next part. Legion had more things (fishing artifact, more currencies to farm for cosmetics, withered scenario) and both had better WQs, so I cede this point to you; when it comes to world content SL is inferior to Legion and on par with BfA.

- torghast is very boring, unrewarding and intranspatent, hard to understand the game design intension

Boring is, once again, highly subjective. I find it more entertaining than IE and WF combined. WF in particular. There's nothing good to say about that crap. Yes, it is fairly unrewarding, apart from a few pets and a mount. I don't know what you mean with intransparent. Once you run it two, three times you should be able to understand everything going on.

- the theme took existing themes and made them more dull: vampires but not really, the scourge but less creepy , forest stuff but everything is blue. The only exception could be the blue angels from Kyrian

Also subjective. Venthyr are quite thematic and we did not have vampires in the game before. Maldraxxus... yeah, they are just undead (which doesn't really make any sense in a land consisting purely of souls), Ardenweald fits it's desing intention really well and trumps all other druidic/"forest" themes/zones we had before.

- huge travel time in the zones but also between them, because they are in fact completely disconnected from each other which is very contra the open world idea

absolutely agreed. And contrary to your first point, this sadly will not be solved by flying.

- covenants should bring RPG elements but all they brought were some spells and yet another glyph system but also the annoying weeklies you need to pick up this X-Pac for no reason other than being different

gameplay wise covenants/soulbinds are far better than Azerite/HoA shenanigans and way less intrusive than Artifact weapons. I remember my class being gutted with Legion, only to slowly creep up to old strength, even worse with BfA. I like it having less of an impact than before. But in terms of "flavour" Legion was much better, albeit BfA was much worse.

overall SL is not the best expansion of all time, but certainly, objectively better than BfA and for me surpassing Legion. But I do (only) raid and do m+, so I understand that you feel bored and disappointed with SL by now.