So is Shadowlands good?

[Syferite]

I'm not a fan of Shadowlands, but for me it's more that I'm just not a fan of the game during expansion launches in general. I have more fun in subsequent patches.

[MoanaLisa]

Voted too early to tell.

I think that it's OK. Engagement for me is highly dependent on story and the premise of the expansion. It's less on progression and not at all on raiding.

I disliked BFA's premise from the start but found it to be generally better than I expected.

Game and progression mechanics are mainly a matter now of shifting chairs around. After this many years there's nothing new to be seen there, just endless variations on themes that were pretty well worn out half a dozen years ago. The game is what it is and you either accept that or not. So all of that—that isn't story related—is baked in.

The worth of an expansion is only really known by the quality of its patches. So we'll see.

[Aureli]

Here's my Christmas gift to you - you are fucking moron.

We have a clear path of gearing and instead of getting only one choice, you can work your way up to 9 options for max ilvl gear. Anyone who is serious about gearing and M+, runs at least 3-5 dungeons a week. And killing the few easiest HC bosses will give you another option to choose from. We have far less RNG to deal with now than in BfA.



- - - Updated - - -



Ran through S1 logs just now and either you have memory loss problems or you didn't play then.

Bro, you have really no clue...

- - - Updated - - -

We have a clear path of gearing and instead of getting only one choice, you can work your way up to 9 options for max ilvl gear. Anyone who is serious about gearing and M+, runs at least 3-5 dungeons a week. And killing the few easiest HC bosses will give you another option to choose from. We have far less RNG to deal with now than in BfA.



- - - Updated - - -



Ran through S1 logs just now and either you have memory loss problems or you didn't play then.

Bro, you have really no clue... Im clearing whole hc and start of mythic every week. There is no reason for doing m+ for me, cos loot there is useless. So i run just 10x 10+ for chance of 220+ weekly. That one item from vault is like the oblý chance to get a gear...

[FoxyAnatoliy]

Too good to be true. PvP is fun again, i have a lot of stuff to do aside of raids and m+. The story dissapoint me a little bit, bit it's a MMO game, who cares

[vipers]

already hating torghast because it just too long and the damn RNG

[Baconeggcheese]

I'm quite enjoying myself, only large issue is class balance which was expected but frankly that's a tame issue compared to what people were expecting. They did a solid job with the covenants for the most part (even though I still feel like I'm missing out on things and there is lots of optional stuff to do at any time but the mandatory stuff is very manageable.

So far enjoying this much more than legion / bfa. Dunno if a big part of it was that I quit by the end of uldir in BFA and have just been away from the game for nearly 2 years.

[exsanguinate]

It's good until the point where you have nothing left to do, then it feels like BFA. The principle is still the same. I have extremely mixed feelings. On the one hand it's good, on the other hand it's not - can't tell what it is.

[Niwes]

its good. but what i had done, if i were Ion:

- Keep everything as it is (including actual pvp and also actual item distribution)
- But keep bonus rolls and tie the earning of them in a simple non time consuming way to Covenants (instead gold/curr)
- Give ppl flying, after leveling and after finishing the campaign
- Make Maw more attractive with small simple things (vanity stuff) and make it a bit more „not awful“
- Untie Covenant descision from player power and game play and integrate more of story in it, than power.
- Balance m+ loot distribution and make m+ more attractive for all players, by adding small things and a nontimed hardmode
- Add even more support for alts, so they not have to play the full campaign again etc. (keyword accountwide quests)

with this changes SL would be perfectly fine for me.

but even without its good. not the greatest, but also not the worst. its ok.

[Gasparde]

They managed to make m+ even worse going into this expansion again. I dunno how they keep doing it, but they keep doing it.

Loot is in the absolute worst state I've ever seen it. I'd take the wf/tf/socket clown fiesta of Legion over this travesty of a 'reward' system any day. Y'all can enjoy your 'clear path of gearing' that requires you to wait 16 weeks for your weekly chests all you want, getting a single item from 10 bosses in a raid or only ever getting 1 item like every 4-5 m+'s is retarded - go play fucking Classic if that's the gearing speed you want.

The AoE cap is pure cancer.

Renown could be interesting, but once more it's just boring and tedious since everything is gated behind weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and fucking weeks of timegated grinding. Can't wait for all of the campaigns ending with us being sent to kill Denathrius in like 8 weeks from now. Thank you Blizzard for once more dictating how fast I should be allowed to progress through your game.

The Maw is the dumbest zone to ever be released in this game.

Torghast is a farce, an absolute fucking farce. Mentioning Torghast in the same breath as 'roguelikes' is an insult to the genre as a whole. Torghast isn't challenging, it's just boring, dull and tedious - and of course it takes fucking ages. But hey, at least you can experience ALL the crazy new builds offered to your spec! Like Paladins... dealing more damage and getting more Holy Power! Like Shamans... dropping more totems! And Druids... being encouraged to DoT stuff! And those are only a few of the manifold cool builds because there's certainly a plethora of different and unique builds for every spec in Torghast! It's definitely not just anything you fucking do just deals 4000% damage because that worked in D3 with sets so it's gonna work here.

I don't see a difference between BFA and SL. It's less grindy in some areas but way more unrewarding (and thus more grindy) in others. It's even heavier on the you fucking play the way we tell you to play train than BFA. I was thrilled to play every day for like the first 2 weeks where I pushed to get several characters up to speed and where m0 spam actually gave you reliable enough upgrades and where you could easily be done for the week. 2 weeks later my alts have pretty much died because it's impossible to keep up with gear since absolutely fucking nothing drops anyfuckingwhere ever - my main has managed to get to 210 by doing every raid difficulty every week and farming shitty m+ like mad, no fucking way I'm gonna invest the same 20h per week into my alts to get the same 2 ilvl upgrades per week, meaning they'll be stuck in the 190-whatever limbo forever. Thanks Blizzard, Shadowlands is so alt-friendly, it's the alt expansion!

Oh, and btw, fuck spec specific legendaries, soulbinds and conduits once more. Thanks that I'm once again having to choose what my char is not gonna suck at for the next 2 months. Once fucking more I'm glad that it's not me being shit that's holding me back, nope, it's Blizzard just deciding that I should be 20% worse off on my offspec just because... that's how they want it to be.

I don't enjoy SL at all. It's just another case of 1 step forward and 30 steps back. Take what we've learned from Legion and BFA, improve it in one area and make it infinitely worse in 15 other areas. Great fun. Now go on ahead and tell me how no one's forcing you to play that way. That's how I want to play and that's how I could play for the longest time - up until Blizzard decided to continuously make this more impossible, promise that things are gonna change with this new patch!!!11... only for things to get even worse. So yea, I think SL has managed to be the final nail in my 16 years of WoW coffin - but I suppose the people subbing 12 months to log in and do a pet battle once per week and the dudes resubbing every other month to log in and do a new questline are simply more desirable customers. Fuck Shadowlands.

[Niwes]

It's good until the point where you have nothing left to do, then it feels like BFA. The principle is still the same. I have extremely mixed feelings. On the one hand it's good, on the other hand it's not - can't tell what it is.

i have that same „mixed feelings“ when it comes down to alts. in some way it is not like BfA. in some way it totally feels like BfA. its like BfA when switching to an alt and you HAVE todo all that stuff again. now its like you CAN all do it again. but you... should. have. i dont know. in the end, i have as much treadmill and same fuckthat feeling as in BfA, when i switch to an alt. somehow nothing really changed. its just packed another way.

[bledgor]

Quite, BFA and Legion one of my main problems is I always felt like I needed to play 1 character, here the only thing I am slacking on a bit is gearing via M+, which as a dps is always annoying to find. I have clear goals I can do daily, my big weeklys, then I can actually step away from the game and enjoy something else, or do old content, or whatever because the game is silently encouraging me to mindlessly grind AP.

Also LOL at people complaining about gearing conduits, because if you do the WQ's that give them, within a week or so you will basically be done with them, only occasionally getting one from a M+ or possibly raid, they are very much completed quickly and forgotten.

[Niwes]

The only way I can see it totally flopping at this point is if they pull a WoD and just don't release much content for it over the course of 2 years and I just don't see that happening. SL seems to have the right stuff to be lumped on to the good expansion list when it comes to the more modern era of WoW.

i am not 100% sure about that.

what makes me scared is, how they totally wanna have completed ALL covenant stuff before release. with zero problems they were been able to lock i.e. conduits behing 9.1. i slowly get that bad feeling they just wanna got it all done, because they plan to use artists etc on other projects and after all is rolled out now in wow, for a long time not much is invested in wow. see wod.

so, i do not expect it. but there is this tiny smell like „get it all done, because after that we just do small things for a good while“.

- - - Updated - - -

Quite, BFA and Legion one of my main problems is I always felt like I needed to play 1 character, here the only thing I am slacking on a bit is gearing via M+, which as a dps is always annoying to find. I have clear goals I can do daily, my big weeklys, then I can actually step away from the game and enjoy something else, or do old content, or whatever because the game is silently encouraging me to mindlessly grind AP.

Quite, BFA and Legion one of my main problems is I always felt like I needed to play 1 character

... CAN only play 1 character.

yep, thats also my way way biggest main concern too. since Legion the game HEAVILY focuses on playing 1 main character and forces you to do so. with huuuuge distance my biggest concern. and the main „treadmill“ problem for me. creates the fuckthat feeling in BfA and actually HATE it already in SL to do the complete campaign and stuff again on 2 alts.

what is so complex with declaring campaign stuff etc. account wide quests? playing a story is nice. being forced to play a story and all its surrounding shit a 2nd, 3rd, 4th time in a MMORPG ... is not.

just compare the amount of quests in total of Wotlk and BfA. its shocking. why they do ? because quests are horrible cheap content. shit over ppl with trizillion quests and call it content. its cheap.

dont get me wrong: i play MMORPGs since 20 years. quests are definetelly a fundamental part of them. but the amount of quests blizz do this days, is just ... brutal. in a game that is all about collecting stuff and hunting items. the main definition of MMORPGs always was grind. hunt items, collect stuff. improve. quests were (even a big) part of it. but MMORPGs and also WoW before Legion, was not about doing 3000+ quests...

for me alt playing sucks HORRIBLE since after WoD. and to be serious: the best thing in classic for me is, that alt playing is declared content. running out of things to do in classic? play alt. play pvp. for me, thats way better than: „grind AP or thorgast.“ the main reason i am happy when/if TBC is comin out: i can play 2-3 chars and progress them. without beimg burned out like fuck, cause i did the same shit over and over and over and over and over again.

[bledgor]

Covenant lock is annoying, but doesn't bother me as much since I leveled all classes to max to enjoy the Legion class halls. It will be annoy towards the end when I have to redo a cloth, 2 mails, and a plate (hurray 4 classes on leather), but it isn't the worst, because some abilities are just sooooo fun for a class (grabby hands for DK, Divine Toll for paladin, etc). At least the renown catch up has been super easy/quick for me. So could be better, but could easily be worse, and with threads of fate I have more options.

[Accendor]

Yes, we've had this thread before, but that was during launch. Now we can review what actually matters: the endgame. Is Shadowlands worth it? I feel like people will say "yes" just because it's better than BFA.

Depends what you think "good" means. Torghast is a thousand times better than Warfronts any Island Expeditions. The story seems really forced and makes no sense at many points, but its still better than BfA. Class design is still not perfect in any way, but once again a big upgrade to BfA.
Everything else however continues the trend of taking existing systems and making them worde every expansion. BfAs WQs were a downgrade from Legion and SLs WQs are a downgrade from BfA.
Same goes for M+ and Leveling / Zones and legendaries. Locking class abilities behind covenants was a terrible idea and had failed as we can see.
In addition to that a lot of content has only cosmetical rewards tied to it and therefore feels meaningless.

All in all SL has a lot of potential that is severely hindered by the storyline (which is mostly BfAs fault) and the lack of a proper reward structure.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

I liked BFA & Legion, and I also like Shadowlands. I'm a more "modern" casual player, and I'm enjoying Shadowlands a ton. Considering so many old-hat players seem to prefer Shadowlands over the past two expansions, I think Blizzard has done a great job of keeping both audiences mostly happy.

Of course there are some people that will always find reasons to "disagree" with every decision Blizzard makes, and there are some people on such extreme ends of the spectrum that the "middle-ground" of Shadowlands will leave them unsatisfied. But overall, I think Blizzard is doing a good job of keeping the maximum number of players happy.

[A Chozo]

For us, yes. For you, no, so go play something else.

[Bumbasta]

I prefer BFA especially when it comes to the zones. Now it feels like we have 5 instanced zones and a seperate city who barely have a connection with eachother. I would have prefered to stay on Azeroth...

[slime]

Not really feelin this xpac so far, I voted too early to tell. But it is by far the strangest xpac they released. I still feel like playing this one character I'm playing to end game will only be 25% of this xpac, because there is so much tied to the other 3 covenants you didn't choose.
Its really convoluted as well. Half the time im out doing things and when they are done I'm like why the F did I just waste my time doing that.

[erifwodahs]

SL is very good mix of stuff for collectors, casuals and raiders. Not very good for completionists who want to have 4 ready to raid alts and everything unlocked on them too? I guess. Playing an alt is ok for me for now, tho it's not top of the chart gear so... an alt

[Mattzo82]

It is the worst xpac I have played (didnt touch bfa). The class design is really bad and lazy, the class balance is really bad, covenants are boring and poorly balanced except maybe one good story cutscene every 3 weeks, the maw is gigaboring and legendary aquisition is boring too. Overall it is an insult to put so little effort in a product of this magnitude and dont communicate why it is what it is. The sad bit is a spec like shadowpriest shows whats possible if they put in the effort. You can only blame the pandemic but people say BFA Was even worse so..