Rate Shadowlands

[Kwaizar]

I am actually enjoying this expansion - ill give it a 7/10 ( the maw just pisses me off sometimes )

[Chucknourishlol]

9/10 - would like a bit more class tuning for low dps specs and wish non DH tanks could be closer in power for m+. I like the difficulty finally being raised and not nerfed when cry babies come out on every tuesday complaining they cant do everything in the first minute of being logged in.

Time gating is annoying but they really don't want players to grind out everything in 1 week then quit because they burned out.

[Adam Jensen]

7/10

Better than BFA, could have been done better itself.

- - - Updated - - -

People still talk about Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk and those times were even more basic than how the game is now. The 'new' stuff in an expansion like Wotlk was vehicle combat which was terrible. That's not the reason people liked that expansion. All you really need is fun dungeons, good raids and have the classes/specs at least be enjoyable. If you can hit those 3 you don't need fancy side stuff like scenarios or islands.

Your biggest take-away from Wrath was "vehicle combat?"

Mine was "holy shit, we're going after my favorite villain from WCIII!"

[sarkayan]

Far from perfect, but a huge improvement compared to BFA. My updated ranking of expansions is now:

WotLK
TBC
Legion
SL
MoP
Cata
WoD
BfA

[dproject]

I would say it's 12 out of 10. Best expansion ever!

[Morgaith]

Shadowlands has a lot of potential but it's held back by dreadful gearing, poor class balance and overtuned raids (possibly due to lack of gear).

[ashblond]

I would say it's 12 out of 10. Best expansion ever!

You are surely over optimistic

[ashblond]

Shadowlands has a lot of potential but it's held back by dreadful gearing, poor class balance and overtuned raids (possibly due to lack of gear).

The poor balance is largely because of the unnecessarily borrowed-power system that Blizz keeps shoveling into players' mouth.

[ashblond]

3-4 and on the same level as BFA

I think 3-4 is lower than BFA.

SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0

It can only get worse.

[Kuntantee]

In my opinion, covenant system and not being able to switch skills is holding this expansion back. I gave it a 6 (OK). If we had insta skill change (doesn't need to be covenant change), I would rate it a clean 7.5.

[ashblond]

In my opinion, covenant system and not being able to switch skills is holding this expansion back. I gave it a 6 (OK). If we had insta skill change (doesn't need to be covenant change), I would rate it a clean 7.5.

Borrowed power tied to covenant is a major problem in SL for sure. And Blizzard will never be able to balance it.

Another big problem is the stagnation of end game without real innovation since Legion.

And borrowed power has to go. They have been the core feature in the past 3 expansions and they are getting old and cause more negative effect than good now.

[Splenda]

I am very much enjoying myself; in my eyes there is a great balance between stuff to do and stuff I feel I HAVE to do. However, we'll see how I feel about it in another 6 months- that will be the real tell.

[ashblond]

Anima/loot drought will cause player sub drought.

[Toybox]

It's been out a bit longer, so I thought I'd post again. I'm sticking with 7-8, perhaps leaning closer to the 7. I'm sticking to what I said about loot (the amount of loot we get is fine, the fact it's locked behind the vault RNG isn't) & borrowed power (I'd rather just have had a new talent row with these cool abilities on it), but there's other things I wanna mention as well.

Castle Nathria & the dungeons are good, but there's little spectacular there that really turns a good experience into a great one. As a whole, 7-8 for the dungeons/raid in isolation seems fair. Similar goes for Torghast - It's good, but it's nothing all that special, although I would argue the potential is there.

The art is simply stunning, although I guess that's just expected at this point. The story is shocking, but can thankfully be ignored. Better classes & requirements for raiders than BfA get a big thumbs up from me as well.

So yeah, 7-8~ or so. An expansion ranking for me currently would probably be something like TBC = Legion >~ MoP > Wrath > Shadowlands >>> Cata = WoD > BfA. With some good patches however, Shadowlands can definitely climb.

[ashblond]

It's been out a bit longer, so I thought I'd post again. I'm sticking with 7-8, perhaps leaning closer to the 7. I'm sticking to what I said about loot (the amount of loot we get is fine, the fact it's locked behind the vault RNG isn't) & borrowed power (I'd rather just have had a new talent row with these cool abilities on it), but there's other things I wanna mention as well.

Castle Nathria & the dungeons are good, but there's little spectacular there that really turns a good experience into a great one. As a whole, 7-8 for the dungeons/raid in isolation seems fair. Similar goes for Torghast - It's good, but it's nothing all that special, although I would argue the potential is there.

The art is simply stunning, although I guess that's just expected at this point. The story is shocking, but can thankfully be ignored. Better classes & requirements for raiders than BfA get a big thumbs up from me as well.

So yeah, 7-8~ or so. An expansion ranking for me currently would probably be something like TBC = Legion >~ MoP > Wrath > Shadowlands >>> Cata = WoD > BfA. With some good patches however, Shadowlands can definitely climb.

The only thing I think Shadowlands does better than BFA is PvP gearing, and probably the 1st tier raid, Castle Nathria > Uldir.

In terms of other things: end game content, storyline, zones, world quests, farming, timegating, torghast, etc. Shadowlands is about the same or even worse than BFA.

There is no new things in SL. If it continues this way, it will end up worse than BFA.

[Toybox]

The only thing I think Shadowlands does better than BFA is PvP gearing, and probably the 1st tier raid, Castle Nathria > Uldir.

In terms of other things: end game content, storyline, zones, world quests, farming, timegating, torghast, etc. Shadowlands is about the same or even worse than BFA.

There is no new things in SL. If it continues this way, it will end up worse than BFA.

My opinion:

End game content is better in Shadowlands because a huge chunk of it doesn't involve power gains. Plus I'd take Torghast over Warfront & early Islands anyway.
Story was shit in both expansions. Playing WoW for the story is like reading a book for the gameplay. A non-issue in my ranking of anything.
World Quests are skippable entirely in Shadowlands, making it a big plus for me.
Zones? I don't know. Apart from The Maw, I like Maldraxxus & love the other 3. In BfA I loved Drustvar/Nazmir & enjoyed the rest, apart from Voldun. There's not much in it either way.

& the big one: Specs I enjoy (& others) are in a MUCH better place than they were in 8.0. The reason I dropped the game very early into the expansion leaving a top 250 guild without their main tank was 100% because of gameplay. The reason I'm back now raiding 2 days in my old guild is because the gameplay is good & the player progression systems are minimal, while the optional stuff is plentiful.

BfA was the worst of the worst. It had better dungeons than Shadowlands perhaps, but that's about it. The gameplay was absolutely shocking, the grind was stupid & unrewarding (yet expected if you raided in a good guild*), & everything about it just to be designed with MAU metrics in mind.

*(Yes I know, you choose to raid at a decent level so you should be grinding all the time, that's your choice, yada yada. Expect Shadowlands doesn't do that, and that's awesome, because I want to play alts/other games as well as WoW )

[Sodavaii]

9/10
Far better.. Wasn't hard considering how dreadfully boring BFA was. Besides raids, but raids generally speaking are brilliant every xpac.
PvP needs tuning, Loot needs fixing, Torghast needs updating ( though i am confident they have more in store that might light the spark again )
Regardless of this all, I am still having a blast. Haven't put this many hours into an xPac since WOTLK.

My list slightly changes;
WotLK
SL
TBC
Legion
MoP
Cata
BFA

[Aureli]

So from my pov, Im “mythic” raider. Atm we killed 3/10 with friends, so we are more like casuals. In past I was playing in guilds around 200-300 place.

I like this expansion so far. Im not happy about class balancing, but switching class really improved my gaming experience. Raid is quite challenging with some really nice fights.

What I find as a problem, for PvE player rio is pretty much the endgame content. After switch I started catching up. Running all the 10s, so i got enough score to run all 12s in time. Still got 2 dungeons to clear and then follow by 14. Ranking/matchmaking system is mandatory for m+ and should be implemented by blizz not by the rio, even though They do awesome job.

Btw rio is the only relevantní reward i got for running m+ atm

[ashblond]

My opinion:

End game content is better in Shadowlands because a huge chunk of it doesn't involve power gains. Plus I'd take Torghast over Warfront & early Islands anyway.
Story was shit in both expansions. Playing WoW for the story is like reading a book for the gameplay. A non-issue in my ranking of anything.
World Quests are skippable entirely in Shadowlands, making it a big plus for me.
Zones? I don't know. Apart from The Maw, I like Maldraxxus & love the other 3. In BfA I loved Drustvar/Nazmir & enjoyed the rest, apart from Voldun. There's not much in it either way.

& the big one: Specs I enjoy (& others) are in a MUCH better place than they were in 8.0. The reason I dropped the game very early into the expansion leaving a top 250 guild without their main tank was 100% because of gameplay. The reason I'm back now raiding 2 days in my old guild is because the gameplay is good & the player progression systems are minimal, while the optional stuff is plentiful.

BfA was the worst of the worst. It had better dungeons than Shadowlands perhaps, but that's about it. The gameplay was absolutely shocking, the grind was stupid & unrewarding (yet expected if you raided in a good guild*), & everything about it just to be designed with MAU metrics in mind.

*(Yes I know, you choose to raid at a decent level so you should be grinding all the time, that's your choice, yada yada. Expect Shadowlands doesn't do that, and that's awesome, because I want to play alts/other games as well as WoW )

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.

[Doffen]

Still strong 8 here.

Shame the campaign is over for now, but still got Kyrian to do from scratch. Classes are fun again, Gearing is awesome, perfect balance of power and cosmetic gains, Covenant are awesome, Raid is great, dungeons good, pvp good, transmogs and that farm is fucking great, while Maw and Torghast is lacking.