So I received Shadowlands as a gift so I played through most of the content. Haven't done the raid yet so I won't be forming an opinion on it. But everything else? This expansion feels worse than WoD in a lot of ways to me. Here's why:
1. Graveyards are WAYYYYY too spaced out. More often than not when I die I have a 600 meter run back to my corpse and because there's spots in the zones where you can just plummet to your death for no reason, this is pretty annoying. If they're going to make zones have random gaps in the landscape, then they should really make more graveyards. Instead, I have to go on a hike just to get back to my body.
2. The expansion story is so incredibly underwhelming. The Jailer is a useless villain that does more brooding than doing any actual evil. Even in WoD I was pulled into the story more. Shadowlands' story is just boring and forgettable.
3. All of the zones are ugly as sin, spare Revendreth. Bastion is just bland and pale plains. Maldraxxus is dark and brooding with really terrible looking landscape. Ardenweald just looks like a darker Val'sharah. At least Revendreth has some interesting architecture.
4. The Maw is hands down the most annoying thing ever implemented into the game. It's a massive zone that you can't mount up in which just makes it a chore to do anything there. The Eye of the Jailer mechanic is just a really stupid gating mechanic that makes the zone feel way worse. There is absolutely nothing fun about the Maw.
5. Torghast is pretty much faceroll. It was advertised as being challenging and more rogue-like than other WoW activities. It's not challenging at all. I've only done the first three wings so far but they've been so faceroll that I don't understand why Blizzard said it would be challenging from the get-go.
6. Legendaries are unobtainable if you don't have the right crafting profession or don't have lots of gold. One piece of the base item needed to craft a legendary is 50-60k on my server. So I've just had to accept I'll never get a single legendary.
7. The lack of a flight whistle is infuriating. It makes doing world quests exceptionally annoying because they're so spaced out and pretty much are all a huge hike away from flight masters.
8. And finally, timegating in this expansion has been the worst I've ever seen in the game's history. Having to wait a fucking week after finishing a quest chain to get the next step in the campaign is obnoxious. Pretty much everything in SL is gated and has made the expansion utter trash in my eyes.
I understand not everyone is going to agree with me and that's fine. But does anyone share any of these opinions with me? I can't be the only one.
Update: Don't respond to this with a comment like "Just stop playing the game". It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.