Why does SL feel like end of expansion time?

[rhorle]

There is no way anyone should receive raid quality gear from doing M+, it's mind boggling

Gear has to be equivalent unless you make Mythic+ a required path for raiding or raiding would have to award a super high item level for each difficulty to "ignore" Mythic+ rewards. World quests rewards gear equivalent to LFR (they don't need to but they do).

[Stardrift]

I wouldn't be surprised if the next patch is the last patch just like WOD. I think they've focus all their efforts on 10.0 with another Legion themed expansion or a Dragon themed expansion. Have not had Dragons since Cataclysm.

Wouldn't be surprised if they turned the Dragon Isles into an expansion with a revived Galakrond being the spearhead villain

[Kallisto]

And it feels like you are big mad. Seems to be pretty obvious that Shadowlands isn't up to par to what the player base deserved. Going this far just to challenge that idea seems to be a bit.. odd.

The player base of wow deserves nothing but outright contempt. It bitches about a and demands b. It gets b then it bitches about that and wants c. Continue this down the alphabet and you'll end up with this community. It demands things, gets it and within a week decided that it hates it.

[Tadkins]

As a casual I feel like the expansion has nothing for me. That is why I am currently unsubbed. Everything worthwhile in the game currently is blocked off in the areas where toxicity, gatekeeping and elitism breed and thrive, and I just straight up feel unwelcome in the game right now.

[OokOok]

Shadowlands is brand new still, early on in the expansion. But for some reason 4 months into the expansion it feels more like the time between expansions, that purgatory time where the expansion is 18 months old, no more patches and still months away from a new expansion.

I log in, see way less Guildies on. The cities emptier. Trade chat not a non stop spam fest. It feels more like a ghost town and just less players on.

I typically only feel or see this after an expansion has been out awhile and people waiting for the next one. But we're still early on in Shadowlands.

I play on two full populated servers and it just feels empty lately. Even log time WoW friends I see not logging on as much. My Guilds usually has dozens of players on all the time, now it's just a few people on.

I can't even recall in all my years playing WoW, to see a new expansion so empty so early.

Active thread warnings:

This thread is awful close to a "WoW is Dead/Dying" thread, but I've opted to live it open for constructive state of the game discussion. But the weapons-grade takes and infighting need to settle down. Be civil with one another going forward.

I just started and I already have that feeling, personally I think it's because. Usually at all these catch up mechanics at the END of an expansion, not the start.
I started at the start of March and I have 5 60's at ilvl 200. I know that's nothing impressive. But that's Normal Raid Ilvl and I got it from just completing my covenants campaign....which took 3hours. Then I did a couple hours worth of pvp and got a 200 weapon. All of them are also 40 renown and have atleast 1 legendary at 190-210. Can't remember the last time gearing alts was this easy and catching them up.

[lordjust]

Content is same as before, you just don't have endless grind and gimmicks on loot.

If you are casual, I have quick tip for you - when next expansion will be full of grinds (that give regular people something to do, but will be hell for min-maxers) and crazy stuff like titanforging or Legion legendaries - DON"T listen to Bellurar, Asmongold, Preach. They played huge part in pointing Blizzard towards current direction. It's disgusting if they call SL "soulless" now.

SL turned artifact power into currency for cosmetics, made it possible to get best gear (even with less regular drops, it's easy to forget that it was impossible from 7.0 to 8.2), turned 'artifact' (Renown) into 2 fast quests, changed legendaries from crazy and unfair system into fast and predictable work. On paper sounds amazing. But you had more fun in Legion, don't ya?

I don't fully agree with that. In Legion there was simply more stuff to do that wasn't grinding. We had a more or less unique orderhall campaign for each class so there was an incentive to level up alts, m+ and raid was relativly easy so we did lots of alt raids and m+.

Now in shadowlands our guild has fallen apart because people don't want to do m+ or alt raids because it's more challenging than before. We didn't do much PVP in general, nobody in the guild wants to do m+, enough people stopped playing or left the guild so we can't raid anymore and I hear the same things from other guilds. The last time I've seen this was WoD.

I still think that removing wf/tf was a good change and also making it easier to get the legendaries you want, because it frees you up to do other things on your alt. The new problem is that a lot of activities aren't alt friendly. Getting to 200ilvl is easy but after that it's more or less the same progression as on your main. Unlocking cosmetics takes far too much anima and even the mission table is worse because it's unbalanced between covenants, missions take a long time and it takes ages to level your followers up.

Yes, I had more fun in legion but not because of ap grind, legendary grind or wf/tf. I had more fun because I had a whole new storyline to do on my alts, I could just goof around with guild mates in a m+10 and still finish it in time, do an hc alt raid and try silly stuff like an all druid raid. Now gearing up alts takes a lot more effort.

[MrLachyG]

I honestly feel like a lot of systems in WoW are going backwards.

World Quests is an example. 5 years ago back in Legion every zone had loads of WQs and it was a healthy mix of kill X amounts of mobs, kill an elite and minigames.
When you look at the World Quests in Shadowlands it feels weird that it has been 5 years of development since Legion and this is the result.

It feels like all 4 zones only have like 7-10 WQs each in them. For example, how often is the collect 10 Animacones up in Ardenweald? It feels like it has been up every single day since the expansion launched. I remember back in Legion the devs said that it could take weeks to see the same WQs since there was so many.

Not only are there fewer, many of them feels like they are designed to be annoying. For example a SINGLE WQ in Bastion plays out like this:
1. Kill 15 Manifistations of Pride.
2. Kill 9+ Humanoids to collect 9 shards of something.
3. Combine these 9 shards to 3 bigger things.
4. Find 3 different platforms to place these things.
5. Go talk to a named mob.
6. Run to a spot 100 yards away
7. Get slowly carried around bookshelves
8. Collect 5 different scrolls where every side of the bookshelf only have 1 or 2 scrolls that you can reach.
9. Congratulations, here is 35 Anima!

And thats when you realize that you need close to 200.000 Anima to upgrade your sanctum and buy all the collectables.

If this quest was back in Legion i could understand it since it was a new system. But 5 years and 3 expansions later im baffled they have not evolved more. And dont even get me started on the "Fill this bar"-WQs where a mob gives 3% progress.

if you're doing a world quest for 35 anima you're doing it wrong. hell, I don't even do the 70 anima ones unless they are really easy. and there are lots of really easy world quests in Shadowlands. sure, they take more effort than the ones from Legion and BfA - no more standing around waiting to kill a single mob (world boss and theatre of pain world quests aside) but they aren't as bad as you make out to be. I remember lots of fill the bar world quests from both expansions that went just as slowly

[dewd]

because it might feel very familiar doing 5k crits again like its 2007

[Paperfox]

As a casual I feel like the expansion has nothing for me. That is why I am currently unsubbed. Everything worthwhile in the game currently is blocked off in the areas where toxicity, gatekeeping and elitism breed and thrive, and I just straight up feel unwelcome in the game right now.

You must have been reading my mind.

I find it ironic now that Bellular, Preach, Soulsobreezy (not sure about Taliesin) are now talking about nothing for casuals.

[Tadkins]

You must have been reading my mind.

I find it ironic now that Bellular, Preach, Soulsobreezy (not sure about Taliesin) are now talking about nothing for casuals.

Couldn't tell you honestly as I don't watch streamers or many WoW YT channels. It's just the general feeling that I got in the game. Just genuinely feel like I don't belong here if I'm not doing the toughest content at a champion level.

[Disxx]

Overall content in SL is fine. As casual I find it a bit weird with a disconnect from beginning on SL and current state. In beginning, it was kinda fun but too much solo content and campaign made it feel like SL would be friendly for casuals with a lot of solo content. In end, it's the same with M+, Raids, and PVP ( Well this is MMO after all). Sure, gearing feels slow, but as some have said, people shouldn't get Mithyc Raid gear without doing mythic raids, or not as fast. ( Even tho pvp kinda is getting 226 gear pretty quickly but pvp is different breed and don't think that's impacting pve side of WoW). What I feel the game is lacking is some pve classic mob grind for some world drop quests, which could reward something nice. But the overall game is fine and Blizzard will never satisfy anyone.

[Hyrja]

Because of the content draught. We won't be seeing 9.1 till July/August and the game will be dead by then.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Anecdotal evidence: the thread.

Shadowlands is brand new still, early on in the expansion. But for some reason 4 months into the expansion it feels more like the time between expansions, that purgatory time where the expansion is 18 months old, no more patches and still months away from a new expansion.

I log in, see way less Guildies on. The cities emptier. Trade chat not a non stop spam fest. It feels more like a ghost town and just less players on.

I typically only feel or see this after an expansion has been out awhile and people waiting for the next one. But we're still early on in Shadowlands.

I play on two full populated servers and it just feels empty lately. Even log time WoW friends I see not logging on as much. My Guilds usually has dozens of players on all the time, now it's just a few people on.

I can't even recall in all my years playing WoW, to see a new expansion so empty so early.

Active thread warnings:

This thread is awful close to a "WoW is Dead/Dying" thread, but I've opted to live it open for constructive state of the game discussion. But the weapons-grade takes and infighting need to settle down. Be civil with one another going forward.

I log in, see way less Guildies on. The cities emptier. Trade chat not a non stop spam fest. It feels more like a ghost town and just less players on.

Time for a new server then. The one I moved to is still very active with guilds recruiting, lively trade chat, lag-fest in Org/SW. Sounds like you haven't done all you need to do to rectify this "complaint" as my personal experience shows that your claim is simply not true.

I play on two full populated servers

Yeah I don't believe that.

Even log time WoW friends I see not logging on as much. My Guilds usually has dozens of players on all the time, now it's just a few people on.

This is clearly because the expansion is over and not because people are either A.) playing other games/doing other things, B.) waiting for next patch... or C.) are super casual as you are, and continue to tell everybody on this forum, so logging in and doing your weekly LFR and 10k anima grind has burned you out.

I can't even recall in all my years playing WoW, to see a new expansion so empty so early.

Then you haven't been playing this game long, or you've been playing it such a "casual" rate you've never experience mid-patch lulls. But you are describing end-of-expansion lulls so you seem well aware of this concept, interesting.


I wonder if you just really wanted to complain about this expansion... again.

[Accendor]

Shadowlands is brand new still, early on in the expansion. But for some reason 4 months into the expansion it feels more like the time between expansions, that purgatory time where the expansion is 18 months old, no more patches and still months away from a new expansion.

I log in, see way less Guildies on. The cities emptier. Trade chat not a non stop spam fest. It feels more like a ghost town and just less players on.

I typically only feel or see this after an expansion has been out awhile and people waiting for the next one. But we're still early on in Shadowlands.

I play on two full populated servers and it just feels empty lately. Even log time WoW friends I see not logging on as much. My Guilds usually has dozens of players on all the time, now it's just a few people on.

I can't even recall in all my years playing WoW, to see a new expansion so empty so early.

Active thread warnings:

This thread is awful close to a "WoW is Dead/Dying" thread, but I've opted to live it open for constructive state of the game discussion. But the weapons-grade takes and infighting need to settle down. Be civil with one another going forward.

I think a big part of this is because basically everything is optional (and was from the very beginning) which in turn means that many people are not interested in doing it. Character progression was the biggest aspect of the game for the last 4 years and it was pushed back a lot this Expansion, which in turn drives away the people who enjoyed it (at least temporarily until 9.1) without getting new players in.

Even the people who enjoy the "everything is optional" style reach a point however where they ask themselves if its really worth it to farm the 10.000 tedious WQ for another recolor of a battle pet they are not going to use. There are cool cosmetics out there, but once you got the ones most important to you, motivation to farm more deminishes rather quick.

Another big issue is the way loot is distributed now. We have Valor now for m+, which is great, but as soon as you raid mythic it's basically worthless except for 1-2 items because of the low ilv cap.
This means you now have removed many mythic raiders from playing m+.
Yes, I unstand that those players are a minority, but still.

[Echo of Soul]

But that isn't the reason for the delay and Mythic+ has been one of the most popular things of Modern WoW. The only thing Mythic+ is killing is raiding since it is hard for a once a week lock out to compete with repeatable content.

Would you mind posting the data that supports that fact? How many subscribers do WoW have and how many of them are doing m+?

[DarkAmbient]

I've noticed streamers mostly known for playing WoW have been playing other games more often lately.

[Osmeric]

But isn't that the great thing about optional content? You do it if you find it fun not because you are forced into doing it.

Yeah, it was pretty great. The entire expansion turned out to be optional content that didn't grab me, so I could just walk away without any FOMO. Really well designed in that respect.

[Electric Lighter]

Yeah, it was pretty great. The entire expansion turned out to be optional content that didn't grab me, so I could just walk away without any FOMO. Really well designed in that respect.

I wish I had this experience. My expansion has been grinding out mythic plus for terrible rewards, torghast on alts, and me debating how much I hate myself to go to the maw to get relics.

[Zorachus]

Wouid love to know the % of players that Raid and M+ ?

Do 50% of WoW players Raid? More, or less than half?

Same with M+ do 75% of the player base run Mythic dungeons?

Or is it a much smaller % of the WoW subscriber base that Raids and M+ current content?

[Dawon]

I quit when we were close on getting Sire HC down (i.e. months ago)... not even that could make this worthless expansion fun and I've been raiding constantly since Vanilla. I just could not get over the fact that SL is just same shit again with artifact wep/neck/conduit and mission/follower/whatever-tables, worldquests and so on... I really need more that new graphics to play the same expansion for the 3rd time in a row. Torghast had potential but the repetitiveness of that killed the joy after 10+ full clears.

Now I'm unsubbed, playing Valheim instead, which is a game that game me the same feeling I had when I started in Vanilla. SL got zero chance to compete with something as epic as the Valheim experience.

That is at least why I split and will probably never return!