Rate Shadowlands

[Nyel]

How can you find covenants a Pro and borrowed power a Cons at the same time.

It's like saying "I hate spaghetti but I really like eating spaghetti" - Covenants are PART of the analogy you drew to legion.

Uhm. The concept of Covenants can be seen as great (like an improved reputation system), but that borrowed power is part of them can be seen as bad.

[hllfrmththrsd]

I still think it's a good expansion but what I found out this time is that content draughts that's what I don't like. So better than BfA but worse than Legion.

[saixilein]

I voted for bad, even i enjoy shadowlands.

The reason for that are:
- Maw was fun to quest, but they removed the eye so its just a generic daylie zone now
- switching covenants on the fly is bad and making covenants and the lore behind it totally trash. Covenants now are just talents that is annoying to switch, cause u need to do it in Oribos and then flying to the hall to change conduits.
- lack of content
- lack of balance updates
- pvp gearing is so fcking slow (the way to earn gear is good, but they need to increase the amount of honor and conquest drasticly)
- fail to balance leggys & Covenants, so some are BiS in all/many situations and some of useless in any content
- some specs/classes dont got any love in shadowlands alpha or even now. They announced some big changes or bringing back unique skills and they didnt, cause they had no time, like Monks.

I was really hyped for SL, cause i liked the setting, the jailor, the lore and the covenantsystem, but it got all destroyed/abadoned so now SL is just a meh addon with lack of content.

[xHunterx]

WoW is still a great game if you‘re interested in hardcore pve content. If I had to rate shadowlands compared to previous expansions I‘d have to say it‘s bad overall.

-story, lore: terrible
-art, music: great
-gameplay: great
-timesink: terrible
-systems: terrible

[McNeil]

I'd like to rank all expansions and put out my thoughts on all of them but for now I'll keep it short with just Shadowlands. Without having played 9.2 yet and I haven't kept up with it, so far its been the worst expansion. My guild has been completely deserted and all of my friends have long quit which never happened so early into an expansion. The world is barren and soulless, Torghast got boring quick, the lore is at its worst which is saying something for WoW. It has less content than WoD and at the same time also less quality which is actually astounding.

Overall rating would be a 3/10, down from a 7/10 which I rated the first month for.

[Edward Wu]

Still floored I gave this expansion a 7/10 rating in the early honeymoon period. Really need to learn to not rate expansions until like the 6 month line.

[ashblond]

Still floored I gave this expansion a 7/10 rating in the early honeymoon period. Really need to learn to not rate expansions until like the 6 month line.

I still hold my 5/10 rating. SL is not a great expansion, but it is not the worst.

It is what I expected since the release.

[Iain]

Shadowlands was a poor theme for an expansion and then it was only downhill from there. Blizzard could've done anything with a WoW afterlife and yet they did everything in such a dour and self-important way. Taking on the afterlife is never a good idea but if you do it then you can't half-ass it as it greatly impacts the rest of the world you've built.

BfA and Draenor were both heavily criticized for their content, however it's hard to dispute that their worlds were immersive and beautiful to soak around in. This is hard to argue for Shadowlands.

Uhm. The concept of Covenants can be seen as great (like an improved reputation system), but that borrowed power is part of them can be seen as bad.

Yes exactly. The Covenants aren't just a great concept, they're actually a necessary concept for WoW to progress further. Covenants are meant to replace factions. Shadowlands did it in a meagre way, but it was enough to at least it all functioned properly as a pilot.

[Sluvs]

It made me quit before the .1 patch.

Literally no expansion ever managed this.

[loras]

I am honestly a bit surprised at how positive it has been rated. I preferred even BfA and Cataclysm over it.

Then again this is just a forum.

[Belmorn]

Dungeons where great, alt play was nice.
Thorgast was okay the first two months, then I was done with it.
Covenants started off wrong, got better with every patch - it was late considering the early feedback they had but at least it improved somehow. Not a big fan of the soulbind system though , felt pretty toxic at times.
Zereth mortis and Korthia where both fun in moderation - then again doing 100% weekly quests on 10 chars gets boring no matter how good the zone is.

Biggest con for me is this xpac has missed a raid and story part due to the pandemic, would have loved another patch where the true jailer ( the primus, zovaal was just a pawn ) would have been revealed as the end boss

8/10 for me.

[Goatfish]

I think it's a solid "meh" out of 10 for me. The things I care about is the visuals, the number balancing, the 'fun stuff', and the raid bosses.

Visuals averages out to a 6-7/10. Normally WoW rates a bit higher, but the whole Jailer theme was terrible imo. The whole 9.1 patch just being even more maw stuff and maw themed gear was a big downer. 9.0 was pretty solid, 9.2 was ok but the raid was literally just an odd series of hexagonal rooms. It doesn't really explain what a sepulcher IS (It's a grave or tomb btw) or why anyone would design one to look like that. No one would look at that raid thematically and be able to guess we were literally tomb raiding.

Number balancing probably falls 5/10. Also pretty normal for WoW. Some things just stayed really unbalanced for far too long, on both the top and low ends.

Fun stuff, which I characterize as toys, mounts, mog, and solo events is like a 3-4/10. There were a couple cool toys and mounts, but a ton of stuff was locked behind 1% drop rates on random mobs, or annoying and/or very unfun grinds for not much reward. Some toys got functionality completely removed in instances because people were cheesing covenant halls with them (rip Lounge Cushion, Mortis Mover, and Darkmoon Seesaw). Torghast just felt incomplete and annoying, as well as incredibly imbalanced. Korthia as a whole was awful, and trying to farm covenant locked mounts in the future is going to be hot ass. As for the order hall specials: NF was real boring, Necro was similarly boring but at least helpful for questing, Kyrian was really annoying and not fun, Venthyr's Ember Court was pretty interesting the first few times but then just turned into a "best friend" grind.

Raid bosses I could probably write a whole essay examining each raid, but overall a 5/10. We had some annoying shit, we had some cool shit. CN was like a 7, SoD like a 4, SoF has kinda devolved into a 3.

Edit: Holy shit, after looking at the poll results... do people need a guide to understand how to use a 1-10 rating system? I find it impossible to believe that anyone thinks this xpac is worthy of a 10/10. Maybe I'm the nuts one, but 5/10 usually means average, 10/10 means you think this is one of the best games ever made.

[RobertMugabe]

I am honestly a bit surprised at how positive it has been rated. I preferred even BfA and Cataclysm over it.

Then again this is just a forum.

Yeah very positive for MMOC. People outside of the WoW Community bubble usually rate the expansion a lot higher.

[uuuhname]

3/10

not enough positives to bother listing, and certainly enough bad things that they have been talked about to death by others. but really most if it comes from me being burned out on this game more than anything.

[Khaza-R]

I am honestly a bit surprised at how positive it has been rated. I preferred even BfA and Cataclysm over it.

Then again this is just a forum.

Judging from the WaybackMachine most of the positive votes were from the honeymoon period.

That said, personally I think I rated it around 9.0.5 or 9.1 and would give it 3/10. However, in my opinion it got a lot better gameplay wise as of 9.2. So I would probably up my score to a 5.5/10.

[Nymrohd]

Last time I stopped playing was WoD. I don't think I missed a single emissary in Legion or BfA. For me it was just a disappointing and very boring expansion.

[enigma77]

Utter and complete gargabe.

No content outside of raiding. After about a month or so Mythic + dungeons stop dropping any useful loot and your only way to get gear is to wait for the Weekly Vault. There is no sense of character progression outside of raiding, like there was in Legion and BFA. Total flop right there. Raid or die can die. The real game for many players is outside the raid. This travesty of an expansion has taken us 5 steps backwards. This is almost as bad as Warlords, well except the raids suck too this time. If I can't make my character stronger by PLAYING the game and only have a shot at getting something by waiting for the weekly rng crapvault then the game is bad. AP/TF had its flaws, but you never ran out of things to do, you never lost the ability to make your character stronger. The game is empty dogshit without them.

Bad raids, with too many needlessly frustrating bosses and the most degenerate raid ever, Sepulcher of the Race to World First, seemingly designed to exclude the majority of "average" guilds and make them quit. Almost 4 months since release and only about 200 guilds have killed Mythic Jailer. Which gives many guilds a difficult choice: Torture themselves until this bad raid is finally cleared or give up. I myself am in the torture camp, everybody in my guild hates the game, we only go online to raid (there's nothing else to do anyway), we hate it, but we refuse to give up. Fun times.

Oh and it got cancelled early because Blizzard knows it's an unsalvagable failure that has completely burned all its bridges.


1/10 because I think Ardenweald looks good.

[Itisamuh]

Shadowlands is hard for me to rate. Without a doubt 9.0 was one of my favorite patches of all time, possibly my very favorite, ignoring PvP that is. The leveling story and zones were fantastic, I loved the covenants and their campaigns, I enjoyed the Maw as it was, and Torghast in its original untimed form was my favorite PvE content ever added to the game. But 9.1 and 9.2 were both pathetic, pretty much ruining everything I liked about the expansion to appease whiners. That being said:

9.0: 9
9.1: 3
9.2: 4

[Greyvax]

Revendreth and Castle Nathria were very awesome. CN definitely one of the all time best.

Sepulcher is aight, and ZM is a decent outdoor questing experience. Creation Catalyst definitely alleviated some RNG woes.

Music and art team = 10/10 as always.

SoD, korthia, maw, and the rest of the outdoor zones were trash.

[Skildar]

solid 7

Story is interesting but clearly the lowest point due to the bad rythm and lack of key moments that should have let a lot of the cast shine. Worst use of major characters... Bolvar and its 4 horsemen should have been a force to be reckoned with. Jaina Thrall and Baine should have been leading our efforts to rally the covenants, etc.

Great lore, good use of the zone and its denizens. Very nice story bots in each zones.

Very good activities in the open world : dailies, achievements, collection items, secrets, etc.

Good soundtrack, hated the one in fatescribe RohKalo's room, loved oribos music.

Many other great points but whats pains me is that this expansion had a very bad profession implementation and carried the same issues that previous one had : still using robe model for armors, still no real guild features, still no mount customisation, still no real mounted character animation, still no raid gear progression that doesn't cause frustration...

On this last point, weekly vault is a great improvement, and the mythic plus system is in its best shape. Dungeons are very well designed and visually stunning.

I'm expecting a lot of focus on professions and raid rewards in Dragonflight, I wish the other issues that the game will keep with the release of Dragonflight will get looked at soon.