Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Naiattavain]

shadow lands is an okay expac. i liked when it was player choice to dominate the battlefield in pvp via speccing than having to earn power. it was better when blizzard just gave us what we needed to raid and pvp. game was funner with chris metzens ideas in play.

[Zantera]

Personally I find it weird when people compare the current expansion in it's first tier to previous expansions where they seem to compare it to the whole expansion.

Shadowlands has its problems like every expansion has had but overall I'd say it's pretty good. BFA obviously had a very rocky start with lots of people being negative (personally I didn't like Uldir so it was rough for me), Legion overall was great IMO but the first tier was lackluster and the issue with legendaries and the secret cap on them dropping (as well as the low %) was a huge issue. WoD had the garrisons dilemma, MoP had the 'too many dailies', Cata had the 'too hard HC dungeons' and Wotlk was a joke considering they recycled the entirety of the first big raid. Could you imagine if Shadowlands instead of having Castle Nathria would have launched with Antorus or Tomb of Sargeras re-used as the first raid?

Overall the foundation is solid. There's issues like with everything but what remains to be seen is where we go from here. For the most part the second big patch/raid is usually the lynchpin and the true testament of quality of any expansion. Say what you want about the expansions overall but BoD in BFA, Nighthold in Legion, Foundry in WoD, Throne of Thunder in MoP, Firelands in Cata or Ulduar in Wotlk. Castle Nathria is IMO a good entry raid for the expansion (i'm comparing it to other entry raids), the dungeons are mostly solid and it remains to be seen where we go next.

[Osmeric]

Personally I find it weird when people compare the current expansion in it's first tier to previous expansions where they seem to compare it to the whole expansion.

I compare it to how I felt at the same point in previous expansions. By that metric, it's the worst of the bunch.

And if the problems with the game are due to core design issues, it's totally valid to judge the expansion early. Those issues don't change even if the devs frantically rearrange the deck chairs. Nor does my ire toward those responsible.

Overall the foundation is solid.

It very much is not. The foundation is unsustainable.

I suspect we're going to get a new game director installed from outside Blizzard.

[Relapses]

It very much is not. The foundation is unsustainable.

I suspect we're going to get a new game director installed from outside Blizzard.

Limit Max for lead game developer!

jk, this shit community would still hate him. Like they've hated every other game dev. Like they will every other game dev that comes after Ion. Why people think changing lead developers will change much is beyond me.

[Azerate]

So uh...

Are we ready to admit that bfa was actually interesting and engaging, and cutting out all incentives to do world content just makes people get bored?

Are we ready to admit that the forums who asked for gutting of everything from the game and making all content cosmetics based are the vocal minority?

Are we ready to admit that doing casual world content and getting even a minute increase in your power feels good?

Bring back AP in its player power form back please. Bring back Nazjatar's benthic style BiS items acquirable through world content. Bring back powerful item effects (like corruption) that you can get anywhere, including world content.

The experiment "let's do everything mythic raiders want" has officially failed and should now be abandoned.

[Theangryone]

All I can say in regards to Shadowlands is that while I have unsubbed during two previous expansions, SL is the one where I got bored the quickest. Already left once and got lured back by some old guildies wanting to give it a shot, but for the first time while playing WoW I am basically a raid logger.

[Kralljin]

Bingo. But it was to be expected, with a hardcore raider as game director.

It's an accusation towards Ion that i've always found is very unfair.

You can pretty much ask any Hardcore raider and a lot of them will vastly prefer the Wotlk-WoD era of the game, simply because there was pretty much nothing you had to worry about outside of raiding, "Raid or die" of that era was the heaven for hardcore raiders.

Now?
Gotta do your weekly Torghast.
Gotta do Maw for Stygia.
Gotta do M+ for the weekly chest.
Gotta do PvP for gear.

Multiply that for every alt you want to play seriously.
Even the paragraph about M+ is a bit silly, from my experience, hardcore raiders are pretty split on M+, some just don't like the mode.

Ever since Legion, the amount of work that has gone in order to being able to be a hardcore raider went up significantly, then stating that the game caters even more towards the hardcore raiders is pretty close minded.

I think this claim becomes even sillier when we go back a year and remember that Ion received a lot of flak for the covenant system from that very audience while every "spokesperson of the silent majority" said "No, Covevant swapping will ruin it, don't let 1% get their way!".

The experiment "let's do everything mythic raiders want" has officially failed and should now be abandoned.

Officially by your own metrics?

The only indication we have that SL has a massive sub drop even notes that this is in line with the last few expansions.
In other words, said changes had hardly any impact on how a portion of the playerbase approaches the game nowadays: They just quit after a few months anyway.

[Glorious Leader]

It's an accusation towards Ion that i've always found is very unfair.

You can pretty much ask any Hardcore raider and a lot of them will vastly prefer the Wotlk-WoD era of the game, simply because there was pretty much nothing you had to worry about outside of raiding, "Raid or die" of that era was the heaven for hardcore raiders.

Now?
Gotta do your weekly Torghast.
Gotta do Maw for Stygia.
Gotta do M+ for the weekly chest.
Gotta do PvP for gear.

Multiply that for every alt you want to play seriously.

Even the paragraph about M+ is a bit silly, from my experience, hardcore raiders are pretty split on M+, some just don't like the mode.

WoD and Wotlk are two very different games. Lumping them and everything in between them as some "era" of wow gaming is the most arbitrary distinction you could use to make a point. For the record people constantly bitched about forced crap outside of raid, that's how you got WoD which was the most raid or.die friendly expansion you could name. The answer was of course to ignore those complaints but the fact that you would lump that in with Wotlk is ammusing.

I'll put it very simple to you. I could farm tier sets literally by only running heroic dungeons. Thats, even if it's just perceptual, is a much more casual friendly experience.

It's not unfair and it wasnt unfair for ghostcrawler either. The fact that the developers were basically forced to provide alternate advancement because players left with nothing to do in WoD is in no way shape or form mutually exclusive to the notion that the developer decisions are almost always colored by particular bias towards hardcore players, particularly the raiding community.

[Osmeric]

Limit Max for lead game developer!

jk, this shit community would still hate him. Like they've hated every other game dev. Like they will every other game dev that comes after Ion. Why people think changing lead developers will change much is beyond me.

A new game director will not be doing his job if he doesn't cause certain entitled segments of the player community (and the dev team) to hate him. Tough decisions have to be made.

[Kralljin]

WoD and Wotlk are two very different games. Lumping them and everything in between them as some "era" of wow gaming is the most arbitrary distinction you could use to make a point. For the record people constantly bitched about forced crap outside of raid, that's how you got WoD which was the most raid or.die friendly expansion you could name. The answer was of course to ignore those complaints but the fact that you would lump that in with Wotlk is ammusing.

In the aspect of what you had to do in order to "maintain" a character, i don't think that putting that together is untrue.

In the grand scheme of things, Wotlk and WoD were obviously different, but as far as progressing your character is concerned from a (hardcore) raider perspective, they were not that fundamentally different.

I'll put it very simple to you. I could farm tier sets literally by only running heroic dungeons. Thats, even if it's just perceptual, is a much more casual friendly experience.

I mean, if you're talking about T9 sure, but if we're talking about T10, then we're looking at like ~30 weeks of playing in order to acquire the whole set if you solely limit yourself to heroic dungeons.
(Full T10 requires 405 Emblem, you get 2 Emblem/day)

I think it's a bit strange to call a gearing process, which takes the better half of a year, casual friendly.

It's not unfair and it wasnt unfair for ghostcrawler either. The fact that the developers were basically forced to provide alternate advancement because players left with nothing to do in WoD is in no way shape or form mutually exclusive to the notion that the developer decisions are almost always colored by particular bias towards hardcore players, particularly the raiding community.

Okay, first you want to call me out for putting Wotlk and WoD together (for the simple fact that both expansions simply followed the "raid or die" paradigm as far as hardcore raiders are concerned), then you ignore the blatant reality that WoD was an utterly unfinished expansion.
Don't even attempt to suggest that the way WoD worked out was somehow Blizzards plan, i see this as self evident.

The only thing that was "finished" about WoD were the raids, which is quite frankly not an intentional decision from Blizzard, it's just that dungeon, raid & encounter designers were the only team(s) that didn't fuck up during WoD's development.

I really have no idea where this myth started that WoD was somehow finished and Blizzard simply expected everybody to be happy with nothing but raids, when even most raiders pinpoint this expansion as a lowpoint of the game, except they had the fortune of not being hit as hard as other players.

That's like having a car crash with a single survivor and then saying the car manufacturer had a particular bias for that one person to survive.

[huth]

A new game director will not be doing his job if he doesn't cause certain entitled segments of the player community (and the dev team) to hate him. Tough decisions have to be made.

And what makes you think that a new director would be deciding things in a way you'd prefer, rather than doubling down on those you don't?

[[Apok]]

Nah, even after BFA this is the only expansion to cause me to stop playing this early in its product life.

[Osmeric]

And what makes you think that a new director would be deciding things in a way you'd prefer, rather than doubling down on those you don't?

Doubling down seems unlikely to actually bring the game around, regardless of whether I like it or not. I mean, the game has clearly gone disastrously off course now. Doubling down on that is just crazy.

More generally: the long term decline in WoW is a symptom that some core dogma of the dev team is wrong. They fiddle with things that don't address the core problem. What's the saying? "It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you think you know that's wrong."

[Dracullus]

Doubling down seems unlikely to actually bring the game around, regardless of whether I like it or not. I mean, the game has clearly gone disastrously off course now. Doubling down on that is just crazy.

More generally: the long term decline in WoW is a symptom that some core dogma of the dev team is wrong. They fiddle with things that don't address the core problem. What's the saying? "It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you think you know that's wrong."

Yes, game that break record sales with almost every expansion, makes more and more money and stays on top for 16.5 years "has clearly gone disastrously off course" because whiner #23423 said so. ;D

[OMGTwitchTV]

says the guy starting with „ I can only speak for myself „

I do only speak for myself... as do you. We both have our opinions, and they differ. Here's where I get back to the thread and the topic and allow you to continue doing whatever it is you think you are doing here. Have a great day.

[ro9ue]

Bingo. But it was to be expected, with a hardcore raider as game director. And it shows a lot, for example with these soon-to-be implemented "valor points". They are almost useless for your average Joe who runs low range M+ keys, and it disproportionately benefits those who can chain M15 all day long (aka hardcore players).

I only play WoW casually these days so I was excited to hear about VP coming back and was thinking about resubbing. Turns out I can't even use the system because I only do heroic dungeons and an occasional set of m0s when the weekly quest hits.

[huth]

Yes, game that break record sales with almost every expansion, makes more and more money and stays on top for 16.5 years "has clearly gone disastrously off course" because whiner #23423 said so. ;D

Apparently, a game being successfull is now considered a disaster.

[Varitok]

I only play WoW casually these days so I was excited to hear about VP coming back and was thinking about resubbing. Turns out I can't even use the system because I only do heroic dungeons and an occasional set of m0s when the weekly quest hits.

My thoughts exactly. They are just making systems that cater to a small portion of players. They are obsessed with M+ and Raids.

[Pheraz]

I'm glad some people are enjoying SL. I cant comment too much about it based on my own personal experience, since I haven't bought it. However, based on other people's testimony, and my experiences with the last few expansions, you simply cannot compare it to the likes of TBC or Wotlk. The game has been forever altered in such a way that its comparing apples and oranges. Different feel, different mindset, different focus, different crowd. The game has been cluttered with so much fluff it has gutted the soul of what made WoW, WoW. Perhaps SL may be 'good' by today's standards for WoW, but it could never match TBC or wotlk for the epic experience those expansions gave.

WoW could have continued to thrive, really thrive, throughout the years if Blizzard would have just stuck with the formula that worked. yes, things could have been wisely added, however what was added over time has changed the very fundamental nature of the gameplay. Very poor design decisions, and far too much clutter and fluff. There's something to be said about having to fill in the blanks with your imagination, and not being spoon fed content and cut scenes to create a story line. You created your own story line back then, it was far more of an adventure than anything Blizzard could produce these days.

I don't like SL because I dislike the atmosphere and theme. But your response is so... I don't know? You come here and comment on how you think that you don't like an expansion because you know some one that doesn't like it? No offense but this is very awkward

[unlockedz]

maybe i got nostalgia or whatever but i really enjoyed wod because of raiding...even if the first raid is usually lacking.
i don't mean in difficulty but in interactivity. wod had so many great ones, probably more than any.
example: operator thorgar/hanz brothers/blackhand/etc. every expansion has some but wod felt the most entertaining raiding wise.
or maybe i'm just getting bored of raiding again
also SL at least on this patch is so ranged meta while being a snoozefest it's completely ridicoulous (pve, don't care about pvp).
lately i'm only raidlogging/boosting m+ a few times a week for weekly as well. there is nothing really left for me to do except stay in m+ que for 3-4 hours to get an invite for +19.
no thank you.