Tin foil hat theory - did they make shadowlands horrific on purpouse?

[Wangming]

Denial is NOT a river in Egypt.

Daaaayum. I'm stealing this if you don't mind.

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LOL... When has a conspiracy theory been right?

Always. They constantly adjust the goalposts. Besides for most conspiracy theories the absence of evidence supports the theory itself.

[crusadernero]

Nah they would never do that on purpose, but its clear that SL is in deep trouble. Its pretty clear that SL is lacking on so many areas and theres nothing coming to the game in months.

They just released a bad product, nothing else than that. Luckily, non of us are forced to play the game. So just stop playing and return at a later stage.

[T-34]

Denial is NOT a river in Egypt.

So you can also read people's thoughts through the internet and discern when they are lying or not? I guess NSA should hire you.
Why can't you spurned wow lovers not accept that some people like the game?

Whether a river is in a country or not is a fact
Whether someone likes an expansion or not is an opinion.

You don't like it, others do. What a surprise.

Let me give you my reasons why I like it:
1. The raiding is excellent
2. M+ is excellent
3. I don't have to farm stuff to gain power like in BFA

So to sum it up the SL gives me exactly what I want from the game:

The ability to overcome interesting and somewhat challenging content together with other people that share my idea of fun - a very pleasant social experience.

[Zantera]

If expansions should be judged as good or bad in the first tier, neither Wotlk or Legion would pass as good. Yet when people think about both of them, they think about the good. Expansions pretty much always come good in the second tier and forward.

[vian]

Every expansion has felt like a system trial to test the waters for something that's never coming.

[Ryzeth]

According to the poll on this thread 50% of players enjoy shadowlands, 50% think its bad or below, its not up for debate whether shadowlands is a success or not 50% of players being unhappy is horrendous in terms of sub retention.

Stopped reading after this. You can't take a ridiculously small percentage of players (IE: MMO-C forums, where a large portion of the users don't even play), and then try and say it's representative of the entire playerbase.

Surveying <1% of players is never going to give you a reputable answer. If I ask my guild of 50 players if they like Shadowlands, and 45 of them say yes, I can't then say it's proof that only 10% of players dislike Shadowlands.

[Sofo1]

I think shadowlands is good! If we ever get to use two legendaries i'd say its legion standard.

[Osmeric]

So you can also read people's thoughts through the internet and discern when they are lying or not?

I didn't say he was lying. I implied he was in denial. Denial isn't lying.

[T-34]

I didn't say he was lying. I implied he was in denial. Denial isn't lying.

How do you know that he doesn't find SL good?

[Osmeric]

How do you know that he doesn't find SL good?

But he didn't say that. He wrote:

Shadowlands is NOT a bad xpac.

No personal pronouns or phrases like "to me" there. This is not a statement about his personal reaction, it's a statement about the overall reception of the game.

A game that he enjoyed, but that 90% (say) of the players did not, would objectively be a bad expansion. Similarly, an expansion I hated, but that 90% of players loved, would objectively be a great expansion.

[T-34]

But he didn't say that. He wrote:

No personal pronouns or phrases like "to me" there. This is not a statement about his personal reaction, it's a statement about the overall reception of the game.

Fair enough. I just automatically put words like good/bad in the category of opinion/subjective and understand his statement as an opinion.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I just have come to accept SL is going to be plagued with long content cycle releases with not as polished systems that get piecemeal fixed as the patch goes on and just decided to cope with it like a normal human being should. I mostly blame it on covid. Others want to hate on the man. Whatever really floats your boat. I just don't play SL when I get really bored with it. Sure, right now I am on alt 3 and with keystone master it won't be all that hard to gear it up. I get the feeling once 3 is done I will probably just unsub and wait for 9.1 or maybe a second wind for alt 4 will occur (who knows). No reason to get jaded, write a blog, or demand others feel the same as me. I understand some quit before me because that is where their line was. I understand some will quit after me because that is where their line is. I also understand some people will never quit. All perfectly good options as long as it is their money they are spending, if they are happy spending it in that fashion, and if they are enjoying themselves. I also understand some people probably can never let go even if they might know it's best and go internet nutty over it and that is fine too as long as it gets them though I suppose. I don't pretend to know why this is an option a lot of people choose to take but nonetheless I allow them to take it if they want to.

Just wanted to speculate on speculation for the sake of the what if in speculation.

[Blackmist]

Is a heroin producer always on the look out for better heroin, more addictive, higher highs, fewer side effects? No. Because he knows you'll buy heroin no matter what. Cut it with rat poison and brick dust. We don't care. They don't care.

We've got issues and we're profitable. Most of us are here for one specific thing, be it M+, raiding or PvP. Any other feature they add to the game can get bent, unless it makes us better at the one thing we care about.

[Luxeley]

Denial is NOT a river in Egypt.

Can't be in denial about an opinion. Let's be real here - do you honestly think SL is worse than BFA or WOD or even Cata (which didn't age well in hindsight). With that being said, SL is mediocre at it's very worst.

[Accendor]

You must be new here. Literally every expansion has been "horrific" while it was current, only to be fondly remembered in the future. There are even folks that unironically loved Cataclysm and BFA. Different strokes for different folks. This is by all of my own personal measures an above average expansion.

No, not really. The first expansion that people hated was Cataclysm, when they introduced Raidfinder.
From then on they delivered MoP which was very controversial at that time but well liked by the end of it, then WoD which was liked A LOT less than Pandaria, then Legion which was universally liked during its time (yes, there were issues like the hidden legendary cap that caused anger, but the expansion as a whole was loved) and then came BfA which actually managed to close up to WoD in terms of how much it was hated during its lifetime.
People do not hate on the current expansion as a tradition, they do it, when its shit. It just happens to be that every second expansion in the past sucked, with WoD and BfA being the absolute worst.

[anon5123]

Cata is remembered as having a horrible final raid tier

And having very little content because a majority of the dev time was spent revamping the old world
And for dumbing down leveling and making everything super fast and on-rails
And for dumbing down classes by making lots of things passives and simplifying rotations
And for introducing LFR
And for in general dumbing down the difficulty of the game even further from what WOTLK did

I played Cata from start to finish; there was a lot more to hate about it than just "dragon soul sucked".

[Nebron]

According to the poll on this thread 50% of players enjoy shadowlands, 50% think its bad or below, its not up for debate whether shadowlands is a success or not 50% of players being unhappy is horrendous in terms of sub retention.

i see blizzard making changes that nobody wants, the changes that everyone wants blizzard arent providing, it lead me to wonder why are they doing it?

Are they making shadowlands for the new players and classic for the older players? forcing the older players to move to classic while the new players obviously love the game because its actually fully built with the new player in mind?

I mean call me a conspiricy theorist but it would make sense having all the older players move to classic because then blizzard wouldnt have to work so hard with new content, they have another what 4/5 expansions to repeat without needing to recreate anything fresh for the next 10 years meanwhile they just rush through some spoon feeding timegated content for the new subscribers.

Never seen that pool, and even if it exists, it's surely non-representative...

Yeah, you're just a conspiracy theorist with nothing to support these claims apart from some anecdotal evidence and personal beliefs. In all seriousness - changing the game time option to 60 days only, and increasing the prices in Russian & Brazilian regions by about 25-35% is nohow new players friendly. It's a change targeting the veterans that play the game anyway, no matter what.

This game is not being produced by bots - there are passionate people there that care what the gameplay really looks like, and lots of devs have really good intentions I guess. It's just the leadership that is dillusional about their goals - but even they have their hands tied. It's because Blizzard is a business company, not a charity, and needs to make as much money as possible for shareholders. And since people are willing to pay for crap, they will be forced to produce crap.

It's not like there's some conspiracy in Blizzard to sabotage their own game so that more players play classic version and so they can minimize the efforts with retail. It's just a wrong logic from you, and I wouldn't go this road really.

[Calfredd]

I played Cata from start to finish; there was a lot more to hate about it than just "dragon soul sucked".

Which is odd because I swear these forums only really had 3 major things to say about Cata: Heroic dungeons were too hard, Firelands was a great raid, and Dragon Soul was a horrible raid with many reused assets.

[Osmeric]

Can't be in denial about an opinion.

But being a "bad expansion" is not just an opinion. There are measurable and objective criteria that can be employed, if "bad" is interpreted in the sense of "serving the business purpose of the expansion". I think there's an excellent chance SL will be a bad expansion by that metric, particularly if it causes a large and permanent loss of customers. We will see if that happens. At this point in Cataclysm the people at Blizzard were still happytalking things.

If you want to present a personal opinion on the expansion, use words to indicate you are doing so. Like:

Let's be real here - do you honestly think SL is worse than BFA or WOD or even Cata (which didn't age well in hindsight). With that being said, SL is mediocre at it's very worst.

Personally, and in my opinion, I think SL is the worst expansion for me so far. It's not even close. In no other expansion did I nope out so quickly. If my personal reaction is at all reflective of the average customer, it's going to be a business disaster.

[NordWitcher]

Is a heroin producer always on the look out for better heroin, more addictive, higher highs, fewer side effects? No. Because he knows you'll buy heroin no matter what. Cut it with rat poison and brick dust. We don't care. They don't care.

We've got issues and we're profitable. Most of us are here for one specific thing, be it M+, raiding or PvP. Any other feature they add to the game can get bent, unless it makes us better at the one thing we care about.

No one is going to cut it with rat poison and kill their buyers. That's loss of business for them. The good heroin dealers, businessmen that don't inject their own product are going to have some kind of rules even in that cut throat of a business.

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I remember Cata for having more cut content than freaking Kotor 2.

Path of the titans? Nope. A Fireland and a War of the Ancients raid at launch? The first was delayed till the second content patch, the latter ended up being a dungeon in the final patch.

I really liked Archaeology, Gilneas and all related zones (new Silverpine). Oh and new Westfall, the only freaking zone that shows the effects of constant war on Azeroth.

The rest was pretty meh. Once the initial draw of rediscovering old zones was done, it was just a bunch of silly memes.

Ahh yes, and Fulmination. Fealt like a beast.

The problem with Cata was that you had 2 design philosophies at work here. From the launch till Firelands which was hard for the expansion and the playerbase. WoW started losing subs here cause content was too hard and over tuned. The lack of dungeons was a huge thing as well. With that came a lot of reused dungeons and content. Firelands was a creat patch but the raid was freaking hard. Dragon Souls was rush released cause they had to respond to losing players and subscribers. They made everything easy and a cake walk. Compare the Dragon Soul Heroic dungeons to the launch heroic dungeons and its a day and night difference.

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But Cata and WoD are still widely viewed as the worst expansions.

Cata is remembered as having a horrible final raid tier but is well liked. WoD, however, is remembered as the worst expansion ever.

The problem with WOD was that it just lacked content. The raids were great and definitely one of the best raids till now. Unique armor sets, weapons, levelling campaign, garrisons etc. It just launched with a lot less content by which time Blizzard decided to focus on Legion.

I've played through Cata, MoP, WOD, BFA and now Shadowlands and so SL is the worst expansion by far. It started of great but it's had terrible staying power even worse than WOD. At least with WOD, it had a hook in Garrisons. SL right now has no such hook other than a borrowed power system in place. The dungeons are terrible and feel they are designed more for e sports than anything. Everyone is so focused on finding the optimal route through trash, I wonder what's the point of even having trash in these dungeons. Loot is unrewarding and the armor and weapons look terrible.