Rate Shadowlands

[Niwes]

Personally: 5/10

Pros:
- Covenant. It is a nice idea in a MMORPG, and I praise Blizzard to try new things. It is good flavor and lore for wow, but it can cause balance issue in long term.
- Thread of Fate. It just offer players an optional way to level. More choices are always better.
- Renown Catch-up system. It is clearly an improvement from previous expansions

Cons:
- Same borrowed power system. Anima/Renown = AP, Soulbinds/Conduits = Traits/Essences = Relics. It is the same max level progression system since Legion.
- Same endgame contents (M+/raids/PvP). Legion introduced M+ as a new form for endgame. BFA and SL just remain exactly the same without innovation.
- Maw and Torghast. They are not impressive so far. They feel like the same daily and weekly chore in a even worse form.

Neutrual:
- Zones and Quests. The graphic and music are good as usual.
- Dungeons and Raids. The design and lore are good as usual.

In summary, Legion introduced 2 major new aspects to wow:
- Max level progression / borrowed power system
- Mythic+ dungeons as a new form of endgame.

BFA and SL remain largely the same as Legion without major new things. SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0

When players did it 1st time in Legion, it was great. When we repeated it again in BFA, it was bad. When we have it 3rd time in a row, it will end worse.

I know it is still too early to rate Shadowlands. But what is your opinion so far?

imo best and most accurate summary. 100% agree and exactly same opinion.
SL is not bad. and not „best ever seen“. important: at this point (4 weeks after release).
at the moment i go straight 100% in line what OP is saying here.
for everything else, time will tell. i judge when xpac is halfway through.

[Soluna]

5/10.

Solid af content, awful execution though, like covenant abilities bullshit, massively reduced loot across the board, etc.

Blizzard literally doesn't know how to make GAMES anymore.

[ashblond]

People really need to read what he put. He didn't say Renown was borrowed power, he called Covenants Borrowed Power. Which it is, he then went on to compare Renown to other similar systems. Renown is nothing but a timegate. Keep people playing for X amount of time. 9.1 or 9.2 will extend Renown from 40 to like 50 or 60 to again keep people playing for X amount of time. Renown doesn't really bother me either way.

Exactly.

Renown doesn't bother me, just like AP never bothered me in BFA either. And I also specifically put "renown catch-up system" as a Pro Point of SL.

In BFA, I never intentionally farmed AP by doing all AP world quests, weekly islands or AP emissaries, just like right now in SL, I don't intentionally farm anima to finish the weekly 1K anima quests. They just come naturally by doing the contents you prefer.

I think SL still can have potential. But it really depends on the content of future patches:
- What will happen to Torghast?
- What is more about covenant?
- What are the new zones and contents? (We have only 4 zones right now, but I noticed Oribos flight master layer has 8 gates totally) The new zones in future patches can be interesting.

I put a 5/10 because of the borrowed power and endgame form limit. They are major issue that can't be solved by simp patch or hotfixes.

[Lolites]

5.5/10

Has major issues with gearing and loot distribution personally did a whole run of Castle Nathria and got absolutely zilch.

M+ feels awful

Tooo much time gating

Having to do PVP to fill in a few slots because loot doesnt drop.

5.5/10 bcs you didnt get loot...
yep, very objective rating of a game

[ashblond]

I mean Kinda, but we already knew that blizzard tends to work in 3 expansion cycles, so not that surprising they are similar. Not sure why you are expecting Blizzard to have some new crazy system that revolutionizes the game every expansion, they try, quite a few fail, and some continue forward in a new coat (mission tables have evolved, not sure how I feel about new one, kinda wish it was a bit more battle chess like; we tried war fronts they were a giant bust; islands were mix, they had okay parts, and some terrible parts; Torghast has a origin in the mage tower, but pretty different take). So yes we didn't get some crazy new invention this expansion but we get a lot of large modifications on older expansion features that I think are perfectly fine.

Yes, I totally agree with you that it is hard to created a totally new form of endgame.

And it only happened to wow few times:
- Arena in TBC. it gave PvPers a totally new form of endgame.
- LFR in Cata. No matter how many players love it or hate it. It is still popular and make a lot of players see the raids.
- M+ in Legion. Which is still a very popular form of PvE endgame today.

I think Blizzard wanted to try something new with Torghast in SL. Maybe it has potential, but it just not there yet.

[Niwes]

read the the first page of posts here. in everything OP said, when it comes down to AP, he is completely right. i dont know what these ppl are and what is wrong with their brains, that stated all the BS on page 1.

if you can not see the dependency of AP - conduits - power... well, then... idk.

and as OP said: if you farmed and grinded AP in BfA or not, is only up to you. if things are time gated or not, also has no meaning for this fact. but as long as AP strengthen your conduits and that strengthen your power, as long there is a linked system between AP and power. every 12 year old kid understands this.

and for the ppl that think SL is not „borrowed power“. i would either do a recherche for what this means, or read OPs post of it, where he clearly stated: Borrowed power = xpac features with direct implications on player power, that are removed when xpac ends. Hello? What the hell ppl think a Covenant ability is ???

Cheesus.

I do not know OP or wanna support him here for no reasons. but from a rational point of view here: sorry, but some ppl are really stupid.

[Qck]

5 at the moment.

Feels like I have nothing meaningful to do on my main a lot of the time and I don't care enough to play alts too much atm.

Weekly 14/15, callings every 3 days, bit of Maw, weekly Torg and raids. There is nothing spammable really, just waiting for weekly resets. Pushing keys isn't worth it because in a few weeks I'll have another 10-15ish ilvl and whatever I'm doing now will be a meme.

I haven't played since reset day and I'm not even missing it. I could PvP, I guess, but Tarkov wipe is more fun right now. /shrug

[froschhure]

sl is content free zone

[ashblond]

read the the first page of posts here. in everything OP said, when it comes down to AP, he is completely right. i dont know what these ppl are and what is wrong with their brains, that stated all the BS on page 1.

if you can not see the dependency of AP - conduits - power... well, then... idk.

and as OP said: if you farmed and grinded AP in BfA or not, is only up to you. if things are time gated or not, also has no meaning for this fact. but as long as AP strengthen your conduits and that strengthen your power, as long there is a linked system between AP and power. every 12 year old kid understands this.

and for the ppl that think SL is not „borrowed power“. i would either do a recherche for what this means, or read OPs post of it, where he clearly stated: Borrowed power = xpac features with direct implications on player power, that are removed when xpac ends. Hello? What the hell ppl think a Covenant ability is ???

Cheesus.

I do not know OP or wanna support him here for no reasons. but from a rational point of view here: sorry, but some ppl are really stupid.

I think they are diving too deep into minor details, when I am talking about the major principles here. hehe

[Kumorii]

OP thinking that Anima/Renown is anything like AP shows that not only he didn't play Shadowlands but also is ignorant of the game's nature, which removes any credit from his pros and cons.

The fact that he puts 2 points he says are good as neutral also shows some bias.
if they are good, they are pros.

[Aggrophobic]

So far, the worst WoW expansion to date.
The legendary system is pretty ok but just about everything is just not fun.
A few of the main problems are:

- Lack of rewards. Less loot from pretty much all content and the loot is less intresting at that. Clearly done to keep players paying for longer but it sure feels bad.

- Too many new systems that just don't do much but are there for... reasons? Indivudual systems feel like they have very little impact but they just added more of them. just seems so clunky and bloated.

- Locked into covenants. Yeah, it's bad.

- The insane travel time. No portals and really slow flights everywhere. No flight whistle (why?). Not even mounts at all in the main endgame zone (WHY?!) and having to go back to the main hub just to go to another zone. You litteraly spend more time just traveling (much of the time just tabbed out and playing something else) than actually doing quests. The main hub really should have had teleports to each zone after you have done the main quests there.

- Unintresting zones. They are all very monotonous when it comes to both colors and design as a whole. This has been a thing before but in Shadowlands it's at a new level of lazy when it comes to design. The Maw is beyond horrible.

- The Maw. This one needs a point of its own becuase it's quite litteraly the most boring zone in any MMO I've ever played. It's a zone designed to be boring, I kid you not. I can't for the life of me understand how a company like Blizzard can allow something like this to go live. Gres on black with no variation in mobs or zone design. Abilities that are designed to be annoying rather than fun and everything is litteraly designed to slow you down, everywhere. Why?!

- Torghast. This is just islands but with the same boring grey/black setting and very little/to no varioation in mobs every time you jump in there. Having to do 12 leves of this (more with alts) every week is painful, really painful. It's also very unfinnished and some classes take a long time to do this even after the nerfs (not difficult, just slow). It was an intresting idea in alpha/beta but turned out very mediocre and quite boring on live.

- AOE cap. Like, why? This was a "fix" that was aimed at the top M+ players (who cares?) yet it's a "fix" that affects every player in the game and makes it less fun to play. Beyoned stupid and it's makes no sense. Some abilities hits everything, some hit 5 targets, some 8 and it seems to be no reasoning behind it at all. Just poor design.

- No flying. This has been an issue for a long while but it's still one of WoWs main issues. It just needs to come back.
There are more issues but these are some of the main ones.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I went good but it is still in the honeymoon I feel. Doesn't mean it will tank but the first patch will tell a lot.

[Gimlix]

Best expansion so far since Mists of Pandaria, if not WOTLK. a solid 9-10

[ashblond]

- Too many new systems that just don't do much but are there for... reasons? Indivudual systems feel like they have very little impact but they just added more of them. just seems so clunky and bloated.

I agree.

SL did a good job removing those over-complicated azerite traits, corruption, essences systems.

But at the same time it introduces soulbinds and conduits, which is just another unnecessary system.

There isn't any coherent logic there.

[Bodaway]

The questing and leveling was pretty good. At level cap it's just a repeat of the last decade.

[Shigma]

I honestly came back to SL from a long break, and started leveling a lock i had at 48 in SL content... i lasted in bastion til around 53... where i couldn't keep going because i was dying from boredom...

I know it's too soon to rate it from that experience, but it's the first time this happens to me with a new WoW exp. pack, maybe i'm getting old. I didn't login for the rest of the week because i had 0 motivation. I hope it gets better, but the intro and bastion felt like a chore so far, and i even completed "two sides to every story" achiev in BFA, which i felt it was kinda lackluster after legion...

Yet again, that's been my experience. I guess i'll play more these days, and i really hope i enjoy it more and it gets better.

[ashblond]

I honestly came back to SL from a long break, and started leveling a lock i had at 48 in SL content... i lasted in bastion til around 53... where i couldn't keep going because i was dying from boredom...

I know it's too soon to rate it from that experience, but it's the first time this happens to me with a new WoW exp. pack, maybe i'm getting old. I didn't login for the rest of the week because i had 0 motivation. I hope it gets better, but the intro and bastion felt like a chore so far, and i even completed "two sides to every story" achiev in BFA, which i felt it was kinda lackluster after legion...

Yet again, that's been my experience. I guess i'll play more these days, and i really hope i enjoy it more and it gets better.

I agree that Bastion is a visually great zone with very boring questlines.

IMO, SL quests are getting better each zone: Bastion < Maldraxxus < Ardenweald < Revendreth in terms of lore.

[Yizu]

Stopped reading when OP said anima is comparable to artifact power.

I like how it is now, I can raid mythic with my guild by doing only the minimum, i could literally just login raids and not do anything else. Not sure if I like the amount of loot drops now, i guess thats a compromise for removing titanforging. 9/10 for me.

[WowIsDead64]

It's ok. Can't call it good due to several major problems.

[ashblond]

which you can actualy ignore and get a catchup next week, so you would be whole 1 renown behind...
which, unless the new conduit is unlocked on last renown that week, wouldnt even put you behind on power levels, and if it is you would be whole WEEK (actualy more like third of week) behind!!!

Have you actually read my original post? I put "renown catch-up" as a Pro of SL.

BTW, BFA also had AP catch up system. Every week, the amount of AP needed to level HoA decreased. In 8.0, it took weeks to level your HoA to level 50. In 8.3, it took only 1 quest to reach HoA level 50.

Ofc it was not as good as SL renown catch up. And that is why I said it is a Pro for SL.

But Good catch-up system =/= Good original system.

Anima/Renown/Covenant system remains same principle as AP/HoA/Essence/Trait system. They are both borrowed power system with just different names.