So is Shadowlands good?

[swatsonqt]

is shadowlands good? Simple answer: no.

1. We play keys the entire time but just dont get more loot. We are too bad to do higher keys without the loot so we are now stuck. there is no progression in sight other than waiting weeks for my vault to help me out

2. torghast ( even after the nerf) just takes to long to enjoy. you rather play everything safe because you dont want the run to be useless so no masspulls or fun stuff like that. it just takes forever and is exhausting

3. there is not really that much to do in a single id. most weeks my "main" has been finished wednesday evening ( EU) and then there is nothing left to make progress on (see 1.) which is nice for alts but i don't get the feeling that i can get better even if i spent hours upon hours in the game

4. Maw just needs something to get around quicker and it would be ok. Never going to be good, really dont undertand why we have the zone to begin withbut if the running problem is so hard that 90% of my friends just stopped going there because its so awful

5. Raiding is too hard. There i said it. We just can't get any gear to get better so every "basic activity ( raid, m+)" feels frustrating. It's just a feeling of "sure i can play 10 times better but playing better is not what gets us futher because we are hamstring by our ilvl". And tbh having to progress on nhc is just stupid. that is the game mode for idiots. we're playing for years now. for 2 expansions we had a cutting edge guild (thank you college) and after that we could casually do at least hc and the easy mythic bosses. nobody wants to struggle on nhc ffs

in conclusion: in our community people just get frustrated by everything i listed because all people see is a very very very very very long road of waiting for gear and that sucks

[Kel_Sceptic]

Now I can't target anything at all, nor buy any gear at all.

WoW was never about buying gear. And if it had any buyable gear, it was never at the start of the expansion or at the start of a BIG patch.

The only thing you can target now, it the thing WoW always had targetable, and that is the LOOT drop per boss. Again, my most memorable gear drop and enjoyable is the sword Nathrezim Mindblade that dropped after 7-10 runs in Kara.

Yeah, it is mindblowing to start playing in half Legion and consider BFA the best expansion since it is the only one you went through from start to finish.
Mostly nostalgia, even if so early.

Most people tend to think that the best expansion is the one they first fully experienced.

In the past, WoW gearing was alot slower and HARDER then it is today. Today is just a median between the past and the last 4 years (maybe).

we could casually do at least hc and the easy mythic bosses

Well, I think this is the problem right there. People thinking HC raiding should be made "casually"

By curiosity, what is your current ilvl ?

[kaminaris]

WoW was never about buying gear. And if it had any buyable gear, it was never at the start of the expansion or at the start of a BIG patch.

The only thing you can target now, it the thing WoW always had targetable, and that is the LOOT drop per boss. Again, my most memorable gear drop and enjoyable is the sword Nathrezim Mindblade that dropped after 7-10 runs in Kara.

Yeah, it is mindblowing to start playing in half Legion and consider BFA the best expansion since it is the only one you went through from start to finish.
Mostly nostalgia, even if so early.

Most people tend to think that the best expansion is the one they first fully experienced.

In the past, WoW gearing was alot slower and HARDER then it is today. Today is just a median between the past and the last 4 years (maybe).

But it always had some fucking bad luck protection, be it master loot or high droprates or badge vendor or a damned coins.
Now there is NOTHING. So if rng will screw you up, your only hope is boe for gold.

[Kel_Sceptic]

But it always had some fucking bad luck protection, be it master loot or high droprates or badge vendor or a damned coins.
Now there is NOTHING. So if rng will screw you up, your only hope is boe for gold.

I feel you, not dening it might not be a problem. But that should not be the goal of the game. The main focus of the game.
I said in multiple posts that gear is the only issue in Shadowlands, for me, as a PvP player, since PvP gear is ilvl 184 and should be arround ~195.

But that doesn't stop me from enjoying the game, that isn't my main focus and that shouldn't be anyone's focus, since once achieved, it lets you empty. The game is about having fun, no matter the gear, at least this was my raiding experience. Even if I was targeting a BiS item, it wasn't my focus, having fun with guildies and friends was my focus.

Plus, changing the loot drop rate, is much easier then removing corruption, or azerite power, or azerite traits, or other features.

[Delever]

If you have the attention span of a squirel like the average MMO-C poster that wants daily loot login rewards like a mobile game: No.
If you enjoy a slower gearing progression but with a much more clear goal in sight: yes.
That being said the maw still needs work. Castle nathria is a very very nice raid, M+ is still fun and I for once enjoy playing the game stress free in case I miss a day of logging in or two.

[GMZohar1]

Not better than BfA, not even close. There are fundamental problems with game design decisions that will ultimately led to either swift change or mass exodus of more casual players.

Just because loot is now rare doesn't make it meaningful. Frustration of loot starvation is going to lead players away.
Just because travel is slow doesn't make it more fun because ultimately it just wasting time.
There is absolutely no bad luck protection and ultimately RNG is much more prominent.
Raids are again main focus of the game, its time to stop this (raider saying this).

Well loot being rare does make it more meaningful.. That's what rare means... Loot starvation isn't too much of a thing with the vault out. Just do stuff and pick a piece you need, it's simple and easier to get gear. Or would you rather get 20 pairs of bracers in a row again? I mean are you expecting to run a few mythics and be fully geared? SOUNDS LIKE SO MUCH FUN! lol...
As for travel, who cares. Yes takes longer to get to one place but that isn't game changing in any way lol
Don't need bad luck protection cause you get CHOICE now with the Vault, RNG isn't much of an issue.
Raiding is not the main focus of the game, Raiding is the same as its always been. Arenas are still a thing, RBGs are kinda making a comeback. You should branch out more

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A lot of hate about the Vault lol.. What do you guys do unlock one slot? lol... Yes its RNG but you get choice, unlock enough slots and every week is a new piece of loot. No way you can come from that shitty RNG chest of Bfa and compare that to the Vault in any way.. 10 pairs of boots in a row to hey now I have a choice. If you are complaining about the Vault you either don't understand it or are not doing enough things.

[kaminaris]

I feel you, not dening it might not be a problem. But that should not be the goal of the game. The main focus of the game.
I said in multiple posts that gear is the only issue in Shadowlands, for me, as a PvP player, since PvP gear is ilvl 184 and should be arround ~195.

But that doesn't stop me from enjoying the game, that isn't my main focus and that shouldn't be anyone's focus, since once achieved, it lets you empty. The game is about having fun, no matter the gear, at least this was my raiding experience. Even if I was targeting a BiS item, it wasn't my focus, having fun with guildies and friends was my focus.

Plus, changing the loot drop rate, is much easier then removing corruption, or azerite power, or azerite traits, or other features.

It definitely stops me from enjoying the game knowing I will get shit for my five m+ runs.
PVP gear is specific with vendor, you can literally target gear while pve is complete rng.

And changing droprates isn't so easy as you think because it would undermine blizzard decision ultimately making them admit mistakes, which blizzard hates with passion.

[dexx]

Better then legion and bfa in every way.

Its subjective, i know. For me - worse than BFA and Legion in every way.

If you are complaining about the Vault you either don't understand it or are not doing enough things.

Is there somewhere which explains it well?

[oldgeezer]

As for travel, who cares. Yes takes longer to get to one place but that isn't game changing in any way lol

It is though. Do I travel to Revendreth and bother with the hassle of the getting to the WQs, or do I log off? Do I want to spend half an hour slogging through Choreghast? Do I want to do any number of tedious things in the expansion for minimal/no reward?

It all adds up.

[WowIsDead64]

Spam Heroics and LFR, they have an avg chance to drop in there.

Thx god world boss dropped it. I needed 250 anima anyway. Then next story chapter granted another one. Overall I'm at 10 now. Otherwise I would need to just hope, that tomorrow's call will drop it. Even here Blizzard just can't do it without RNG crap.

[Sluvs]

Don't worry...once you can wrap your head around the very simple fact that "the community" is not a hivemind but actually consists of individuals with many, many, many different interests in all different aspect of the game, maybe we can stop with the generalisations.

No..not everyone and certainly not "the community" wanted "xyz" for ages, but the people vocal on forums. Obviously the people who were fine with "xyz" and had it taken away will now complain ^^

That would be correct, but I know for a fact that some people that are complaining right now also complained back then.

Yea yea, the community is not a hive mind, but they definitely change their minds. And really fast too.

[Kel_Sceptic]

It definitely stops me from enjoying the game knowing I will get shit for my five m+ runs.
PVP gear is specific with vendor, you can literally target gear while pve is complete rng.

And changing droprates isn't so easy as you think because it would undermine blizzard decision ultimately making them admit mistakes, which blizzard hates with passion.

Well m8, most of you crying so bad over loot, you will have the same feelings if you go and WORK on a job only FOR MONEY, not doing what you love,like,studied, are passionate about. This is the same thing, if you focus more on the drop instead of that time with your guildies, friends, then you are in the wrong place.

I am 90% sure that most people crying over gear are players that started playing WoW in the last 2 expansions :/ And that is a sad an unfortunate experience indeed, since you think those almost sh177i last 4 years are what WoW is about, but in fact is the contrary. That is why devs switched it back from "If you have the attention span of a squirel like the average MMO-C poster that wants daily loot login rewards like a mobile game: No." to "If you enjoy a slower gearing progression but with a much more clear goal in sight: yes."

Now, we will see how blizzard will cope with this, but from my personal experience with Generation "Z"oomers, they want things "right now" no matter the state of the game, and they get boreed so fast of it no matter how well it is done. It only matters if they make the majority (50%+1 ) of actual WoW players, or are just a vocal minority.

I remember knowing a 22 yo guy that was PAYING REAL MONEY, on a private WotLK server, just to have his character solo oneshoting the Icecrown raid.

Could be....yeah..sometimes you think something is awesome on paper until you get it

I got 2 distinct, personal, examples of this kind of "you think you do, but you don't":

1.Man I remember thinking the Cataclysm changes would improve my experience 100000%times.
Well, I thought like that until the pre-patch hit us, and man I was dissapointed about that.

2.Classic server, after the Cataclysm ruined my "old WoW zones + noflying" I thought that Classic will be the thing that will make me love WoW like I did back in vanilla-tbc-wotlk years, but man did J. Allen Brack was right, at least in my case.

After realising that "old WoW zones +no flying" is not going to be enough to make me "feel better", I've started loving WoW as it is, with its negatives and positives. Even with the sh17 storm BFA that was brought upon us, I've still managed to keep loveing WoW. We just depart our ways when suffering represents more then 30-40% of my playing time.

[kamuimac]

Not better than BfA, not even close. There are fundamental problems with game design decisions that will ultimately led to either swift change or mass exodus of more casual players.

Just because loot is now rare doesn't make it meaningful. Frustration of loot starvation is going to lead players away.
Just because travel is slow doesn't make it more fun because ultimately it just wasting time.
There is absolutely no bad luck protection and ultimately RNG is much more prominent.
Raids are again main focus of the game, its time to stop this (raider saying this).

+1

for me SL is much worse expansion then WoD - at least in WoD leveling was fun - now they managed to destroy even that

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Do a poll after 6 months. People are still in their honeymoon phase and will swallow anything which has shiny stuffing on it.

for most people honeymoon is already long over

either you enjoy expansion by now or you hate it with passion and left/are ready to leave

it will all play out in incoming 3 months with catastrohic sub losses that retail will inevitably suffer.

Ion better be having some really good back up plan - or he can look for new job already now.

[Doffen]

So you did lie. As usual, pulling "quotes" out of your ass.

Never said it was great system, i said it wasnt great system. So you did lie.

And im not going to bother reading rest of your post because clearly you don't understand simple factors that could stop you progress, and if you don't understand that gold can be one of those factors is on you.

You should go tanking. The amount of dodge is astonishing.

It does not worth the trouble. At first I thought it might be a good debate, but didn't saw the signature in time.

I know personal preference isn't debateble, but hell, putting BFA on top all any other expansion it is more then subjective Either trolling at its highest or low 1% vocal group

LE:
See, he uses literal stuff like great and good, when he's matrix powers don't let him dodge the bullet for long.

Great and good are on the same side, no matter how hard you wanna bullet dodge. Keep diverting and dodging the questing with answers like this.
Hell, next time you can answer the question with another question by diverting it like this: "There are chilldren dying in Africa from hunger, and all you care is the fact that 4 months ago I was thinking that buying stuff from AH was ok, and now is not, you cruel person you?"

I know Kaminaris, he lies about getting CE(read: buys them, got proof too) he thinks what he says is the majority, I mean the vote says 50% + is voting SL is good, but still you are the minority, right. He never stop surprising!

In this particular topic he said, several times in several threads that Corruption was great(good) because you could just buy it. While now gold is an issue because he says that you have to buy gear now. There is no difference, so he is a hypocrite. So that's the reason why he won't answer.

[kamuimac]

4 years ago a player asks on how to maintain motivation and reason to play FFXIV during Gamescom.

Player: "Hey YoshiP, I love FFXIV, but it's hard to keep playing your game (because of the lack of content) and now I'm taking a break here. Sorry for asking this but is there a way or a reason to keep playing? or anything that can you teach me how to keep my motivation for playing your game?" - A player asking Yoshida during Gamescom

Yoshida: "It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game."

This is the exact way that SWtoR is being played, and while I do understand that some people enjoyed it, at the same time I am wondering, what would people do in WoW if they got BiS gear in just 2 weeks of playing ?


I mean, atm looking at random people in the 2v2 bracket, I can see people with more PvE gear on them then PvP:

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...lganis/peppita
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...uljin/shamiyam
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...s/malganis/fys

If they can get ilvl 213, 204 etc. what keeps you from getting yours ? And moreover, what is this need to gear as in you are going to the Olympics, or going for World First Myhtic kill.


The most memorable thing in my WoW raiding period is Nathrezim Mindblade from Prince Malchezaar in TBC, that I got on my warlock after more then 7 kills (that is 7 WEEKS). And when it finally dropped, man I was more happier then ever.


You raid with your friends and guildies for fun and for clearing that raid. Then go to HC mode and so on, gear comes with time.
BUT as all purpuses in life and the obsesive focus on them, the more you are focusing on them, the more they burn you out.


If you make GEAR a purpuse in this game, or GEAR=FUN for you, then it will burn you out. And then when you will finally be BiS geared, you will quit until next patch, since you got no reason to play, just like the FFXIV player asked Yoshida.

But if you enjoy raiding or M+ with your friends/guildies, then that would never happen as long as you are having fun.

the irony that you are calling out FF14 - game which offers you almost best gear in game for doing most casual activities possible - but very reguraly.

you know how it would look like in wow if it was like in FF14 ? lfr would give you tokens which you could exchange for hc raid gear.

almost like ... VP did

almost like YoshiP copied this model direcly from WoW

you know why ? because it f.... worked .

[Tradu]

It's the best expansion since WoD. I could see it matching WoD, even though class design is worse, just because a lot of other systems have improved since then(M+ added, WQs instead of dailies for the most part). As it is right now, I'd tentatively put it between Cata and WoD(MoP > WoD >= SL >= Cata > Legion > Wrath > BfA).
Covenants are still a problem for me(the abilities are mostly extremely lame because without swapping and because they're class wide they have to be lame, soulbinds could be nuked and I wouldn't even notice), the Maw is a dogshit zone and Prideful is a terrible seasonal affix compared to Awakened(Prideful is basically a worse version of Reaping). No Whistle is a bit annoying, but Wormhole mostly makes up for it, especially because you don't actually have to do world content in the first place. Torghast is very disappointing, but at least they made it not take as long.
Classes for the most part have improved, the raid is pretty good and the dungeons seem okay so far. They've even managed to make PvP bearable by making it so people can actually die.

[ShaanuJaanu]

Not better than BfA, not even close. There are fundamental problems with game design decisions that will ultimately led to either swift change or mass exodus of more casual players.

Just because loot is now rare doesn't make it meaningful. Frustration of loot starvation is going to lead players away.
Just because travel is slow doesn't make it more fun because ultimately it just wasting time.
There is absolutely no bad luck protection and ultimately RNG is much more prominent.
Raids are again main focus of the game, its time to stop this (raider saying this).

Raids are far from the main focus of the game if you consider the reward structure. Rated PVP is.

[Kokolums]

Don't worry...once you can wrap your head around the very simple fact that "the community" is not a hivemind but actually consists of individuals with many, many, many different interests in all different aspect of the game, maybe we can stop with the generalisations.

No..not everyone and certainly not "the community" wanted "xyz" for ages, but the people vocal on forums. Obviously the people who were fine with "xyz" and had it taken away will now complain ^^

there is no wow community. there is maybe 1-2 million players and they hardly talk to each other. blizzard is one big final mistake from driving subs under 1 million.

[Kel_Sceptic]

the irony that you are calling out FF14 - game which offers you almost best gear in game for doing most casual activities possible - but very reguraly.

Actually i showed a bad example that makes you stop playing.
I am an WoW Addict, I'm playing this game for 15 years, and I've only stopped playing in BFA because of the grind and interdependent path you have to cross to play, for example only PvP. In bfa you had to PVE to be relevant in PvP. Some classes even had to PvP to get the Blood of the Enemy, even if not liking to PvP.
If it keeps the systems at mop/wod/tbc/wotlk/shadowlands ... hell even Legion without artifact power, then I think I will play this game 15 years more. Who knows, but, for the moment, I don't want systems in place that make me stop playing for months.

you know how it would look like in wow if it was like in FF14 ? lfr would give you tokens which you could exchange for hc raid gear.

almost like ... VP did

almost like YoshiP copied this model direcly from WoW

you know why ? because it f.... worked .

Exactly, who the fk would like to gear HC raid gear from doing LFR. We know who, mobile gamers, candy crush hardcores

[Biglog]

A lot of very strange design decisions in Shadowlands. So many quirky gimmicky quests. I don't even care about chests and secret unlocks most of the time because when I go to do one there's always some quirky "requires 3 players to summon" or puzzles that you'd never figure out without looking up. WQs take too long to get to and to do for the meager rewards. Pvp being the best way to gear up. Some really awful rep grinds. The scaling makes it not feel like your character really gets stronger as you gear up.
Just a whole lot of strange design decisions where I out loud said to myself, what Blizzard intern came up with this idea?

It's not all bad. The game looks great. The music is beautiful. There's a lot of Blizz reference humor mixed in. To be fair also it's difficult to compare the full content of other expansions such as BfA and all of it's patches so 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 to just the content in SL 9.02. Kind of like evaluating player trades in sports, we'll really need to wait until 10.x and SL is done with all of it's content to compare it fairly to BfA or other expansions. Otherwise it's kind of like evaluating MoP without taking Timeless Isle into account.