Rate Shadowlands

[LordVargK]

You can't rate SL against finished expansions. But purely from a X.0 patch standpoint SL is the best expansion I have played (did not play TBC or WotLK).
Cata's first patch was okay, Raids were kinda meh but heroics were fun and challenging. Also it was the first time I really played WoW. MoP's first patch was dreadful, boring raids and daily quest hell. WoD's was great for one week and then boring. Legion's was absolute trash. Having to play with half assed classes sucked big time, especially because many classes got pruned into oblivion. BfA's was even worse, Classes lost everything from Legion and did not gain anything new. Also Azerite scaling bullshit.
SL is just perfect in comparison.

[Toybox]

Thread of fate and renown catch up are a good change for alt leveling. But I don't see SL much better than BFA for alt friendly.

I had 12 max chars in BFA (I always have 1 of each class). They are all around heroic raid level gear, and half of them never raided (they get gear from emissary, titan residum vendor or those 4 x mythic weekly quests, etc.). It was really easy to maintain multiple alts in BFA, except essences.

The only thing you really need to do is the necklace essence questline. War campaign quests in BFA were totally optional. Covenant campaign in SL is less optional IMO, because it actually gives good gear for alts and sanctum update. The essence questline is shorter than covenant campaign. And weekly vision is shorter than weekly torghast.

I never did weekly islands on most of my chars, only did warfront if I can get upgrade or transmog. I never farmed AP world quests, just I never farm anima world quests right now in SL.

There's quite a difference in expectations between sorta heroic & a higher end mythic guild. We had to do islands, warfronts, AP quests, the lot. As a raider in Shadowlands, I have to get 2 Renown each week, one of which is earned passively & the other one taking like 3 minutes in The Maw. That's all there is to do now the campaign is over, and the campaign was probably only about the same length as the War Campaign anyway. Hell even Torghast is irrelevant now we have enough Soul Ash for 2x 235 legendaries (unless you what more, in which case 40 mins each week to cap it out isn't so bad).

Less time spent farming AP & world quests means more time to do stuff I actually want to do. BfA was the first expansion where the bad outweighed the good for me, so as much as I love raiding, I had to give it up. As I said in my first post, Shadowlands doesn't do many GREAT things, but it doesn't put too much pressure on raiding players to spend time they'd otherwise want to spend elsewhere on farming tedious shit like islands & WQs, and that (and the much better classes) is why I'm really enjoying it so far.

[Accendor]

There's quite a difference in expectations between sorta heroic & a higher end mythic guild. We had to do islands, warfronts, AP quests, the lot. As a raider in Shadowlands, I have to get 2 Renown each week, one of which is earned passively & the other one taking like 3 minutes in The Maw. That's all there is to do now the campaign is over, and the campaign was probably only about the same length as the War Campaign anyway. Hell even Torghast is irrelevant now we have enough Soul Ash for 2x 235 legendaries (unless you what more, in which case 40 mins each week to cap it out isn't so bad).

Less time spent farming AP & world quests means more time to do stuff I actually want to do. BfA was the first expansion where the bad outweighed the good for me, so as much as I love raiding, I had to give it up. As I said in my first post, Shadowlands doesn't do many GREAT things, but it doesn't put too much pressure on raiding players to spend time they'd otherwise want to spend elsewhere on farming tedious shit like islands & WQs, and that (and the much better classes) is why I'm really enjoying it so far.

I really hated BfA, but for completely different reasons. I really dislike the SL concept where everything is optional, because then nothing matters for me. I get other people prefer ot this way, just not me.

[Toybox]

I really hated BfA, but for completely different reasons. I really dislike the SL concept where everything is optional, because then nothing matters for me. I get other people prefer ot this way, just not me.

Fair play, I understand that POV as well. The way I see it is that if something is optional, I'll do it if I enjoy it (like Pet Battles), otherwise I'll leave it entirely (Ember Court). If too many things I'm not a fan become power gains that a guild expects me to do, then it becomes harder & harder to justify raiding - BfA was the only expansion that tipped that particular scale for me.

[threads]

enjoyed the first few weeks. ended up quitting when m+ and raid came out due to not being a broken meta class and getting declined for groups all day. also too many chores so i had no time for my alts.

[Fartoo]

2/10

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

@ 3. - I don't know how you're done by Wednesday evening. Sure, if you're playing since the morning until you go to sleep, that could work. I manage to stretch out my weekly "obligations" throughout the entire week.

@ 4. - do twisting corridors, get the mount ?

@ 5. - You mean, raiding is finally not easy, and knowing your class and being good pays off instead of getting carried by RNG corruptions proc ? Thank god that it is!
If you are struggling with heroic Nathria, and you're supposedly a CE guild, then I've bad news for you...

I can see what type of a player you most probably are just from your post and how much you talk about ilvl keeping you down. I think that THE saying is due, git gud.

[Revamp Man]

Yes, in the same way Anima increases player power.

Anima increases renown level, which unlock more soulbinds and conduits that increase player power.

unlike AP renown is capped

you do the one weekly quest and you are done
AP had a constant farm

you cant be serious

[DechCJC]

8.

Would be a 9 if they actually balanced the game (Pvp) and didn’t just go “eh, fuck it, 9.1 is in a few months, may as well fix it then and make it look like content”.

Other than that I’m having a blast, I think it’s a great expansion so far. In general I’ve been having a tonne of fun with WoW lately.

[Kynario]

Definitely good so far.

[Unzipped]

I've played through every single expansion since Burning Crusade with the exception of BFA (saw the writing on the wall ahead of time with that one) and I feel like Shadowlands is easily by far the worst of them all. We're only 60 days in and I'm already contemplating pulling the plug. It's just not fun. The zones are boring and tedious, the story is lame and uninteresting, class balance is abysmal, and the gearing progression is being artificially limited (loot drought, etc.) in an effort to string along your monthly subscription. Paying $15 a month and investing countless hours into the game every single week only to receive a measly amount of anima and a duplicate item in your weekly vault feels like borderline thievery.

[Rootsbum]

7

Gearing sucks.
If I do one high mythic a week, I progress as mutch as og I do 10.
Done CN normal since release , and 5\10 heroic;
- got 4 drops in normal
- 0 drops heroic

[Jin]

Zones 7/10 , find them not as impressive as before and it is very lineair.

Story 6/10 , Not connected with it at all, and very gated, that keeps me from getting ''into'' it.

PVE 3/10 , Not getting any loot at all for a lot of runs, normal, heroic, mythic (dungeons) is just meh. I am 213 atm, since release, and i am still wearing 6 ilvl 200 gear. And I know some got i t even worse. World things to do.. so boring and t hey made it even longer to complete. Thorgast and the Maw? Come on...

PVP XX , I dont do it

Alt 3/10 , yes you can lvl up in a day, and then start progressing anything BUT the wall of gear also hits alts, and is even worse since you gotta start from scratch, again.

Overal a 5..

[VinceVega]

I like it very much. Loot system is the best it has been in years. Not as much but you keep what you get longer because no TF etc. With the amount of loot from BFA we would all have outgeared heroic raiding in week one.

PVP and PVE should be seperate though.

Whining about the "gated" story.... meh. I like it. I have something else to do than raid and mythic+ after 3 weeks.
Flying is a taste thing. Not going to open that box here.

[Vasilisa]

Lol you can’t be serious? 5/10 maybe

He is entitled to have his own opinion and so are you. His 8/10 is as much valuable as yours 5/10. Although it's be better if both of your gave merits & flaws that you see in current expansion.

[ashblond]

Zones 7/10 , find them not as impressive as before and it is very lineair.

Story 6/10 , Not connected with it at all, and very gated, that keeps me from getting ''into'' it.

I agree. Shadowlands has less zones than previous expansions. The story and lore is underwhelming at the moment, especially jailer.

[DeusX]

Solid 0 from my behalf, but there is not an option in the poll.
Actually not so bad, I guess I have grown out of it and I also don't like the community around wow, with all the crap streams, everyone is doing it now, saying w/e just to make that shit work. I mean, the damn wow internal ticket system is sending you to wowhead, you find how to do some quests from youtube, you need to play m+ like streamers do else you get lots of l2p remarks, etc etc.
I mean, it became a game you need to invest shitloads of time to learn to play it, I am better of learning something else.

[pewpmeiser]

A strong 8 from me. It would be higher if loot drops didn't feel as bad as they currently do for raids and M+, but other than that it is very good.

[Gasparde]

4 on a bad day, 2 when I'm in a particularly great mood only to have that ruined the second I think about SL.

The gearing system is the absolute worst it's ever been. I've never considered myself as someone who was particularly invested into gear... mostly because I've always done the hardest content pretty early on and naturally had everything pretty quickly - working as intended one should think. But not this time around. Playing this game just isn't worth it as there are just no fucking rewards. And no, a single 210 piece every 2-3 hours is not worth it. A single raid item per ID isn't either. Like, when classes aren't as fun as they used to and you just aren't getting anything for playing the game... it's really hard to justify why one would keep playing - other than their sunken cost addiction that is.

Alt friendliness is also non-existent exactly due to that. I don't FUCKING care about catching up with the story, yet that's basically all the renown catch up serves as. They could've just timegated Soulbinds and Conduits and what not and Renown would basically be nothing but mog and story - boring ass mundane sluggish foreseeable timegated story and 6 recolors of the same thing you already have. Legendaries are actually impossible to catch up, gearing is flat out impossible if you don't play 15 hours per raid (in which case you'll still cap out at 210 btw, great great great) and gems are also giga timegated. But hey, at least you can catch up with that sweet sweet and super deep Ardenweald story within... 2 weeks!

Torghast as THE expansion feature is a fucking joke. I really don't see much difference to Islands here, especially not since they're shoehorn forcing everyone in there again with thei random ass weekly Soul Ash. Twisted Corridors isn't even just a joke, it's a bad joke. Proper roguelikes would be ashamed to be named in the same breath as Torghast. Fuck, even bad roguelikes would be. The place has like 1 build per spec, 2 if you're generous, while some specs really don't even have a build at all and are instead just amp'd up base version of the regular spec. So you just play the same damn thing over and over again, run for run, every single time. Torghast might look less clownish in a year from now... just in time to be dropped forever.

Other than that? What's even left? Worldquests are more pointless than ever. While also being more tedious than ever. With us being less mobile than ever. The fucking Maw has got to be the absolute worst thing any game 'dev' has ever designed. I sincerely hope that any dev that hasn't quit about the prospect of designing this pos loses their job and never finds work in the field ever again. Covenants are worse than I had ever imagined, just for reasons no one foresaw - it's still an unbalanced pos garbage nonsense piece of content, but since they took all the potential fun and nuance and impact and god knows what out of it... just who even fucking cares anymore. Go on, enjoy the mega awesome talent trees your SOULBINDS provide for you, make the choice based on your PERSONAL PREFERENCE whether you like less durability damage or random herbs found on missions! Pointless ass garbage system. Nathria is decent, although shit like Legion Generals kinda ruined the whole tier for me. M+ just keeps getting more disappointing with every expansion because it's all about sucking that tiny worthless MDI cock no one gives a fucking damn about. And then there's alt leveling... yay... can't wait for that to either only ever be refined in 10 years or dropped immediately in 2.

A 3/10 is more than generous for this steaming pile of nothing. If this game didn't have the WoW name attached to it it would've died 1 week after release because absolutely no one would ever give this another look.

[Foolicious]

For me personally its fine, but nothing more. I decided not to invest time raiding or doing m+ regularly before its release and i had quite some fun nontheless.
Played around one and a half month before i got bored. Gearing doesn't affect me in a way it does others, so thats not a issue for me. Its just that there is nothing exiting about shadowlands. Its Legion/Bfa with another look and style. I had fun doing the story quests, clearing thorgast and the stuff you do when an expansion launches, but i have no desire to keep playing the game until .1 or .2 comes out. I may have spend some more time if anima farm wasn't as tedious as it is. Upgrading your covenant should be encouraged by the game, not feel like you shouldn't spend time doing that.

[ashblond]

players are quitting this expansion faster than ever.