Rate Shadowlands (2021 version)

[ashblond]

It’s all around solid. Probably more than WoW has ever been. In almost every way.

Just feels like it’s missing something and needs more to do...

The game needs more than the trio of PvP, raid, dungeon.

A creative component like transmog design or housing would do wonders.

You pointed out the real core problem here. The end game has been the same for years now.

SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0. It is an expansion with the same endgame with different cosmetics.

I believe Blizzard tried to make Torghast a new form of end game. But it failed miserably.

[dope_danny]

Bad, not terrible, just bad. Its a bad rpg, its soundtrack is forgettable, its story is atrocious, the actual new mmo mechanics are more tired mobile game stuff that doesn't interest me and it just doesn't make me go "boy, today i want to log in to world of warcraft because god damn that experience is so damn good". Its a sliding decline of mediocre where once again the art team is carrying the load. I can't say i would recommend it to friends and i don't particular care to pay any more game rent to activision to see how Sylvanus is getting kerrigan'ed when i can just play other games and read about her inevitable transformation into a kyrian or the new arbiter or some other cringey horseshit online for free.

Its still got the smooth gameplay but theres just nothing else in shadowlands it offers worth paying a sub fee for. It feels like Cataclysm but with less content. You do your instances or farm to fill a bar for cosmetic shit then back to logging out. We have been down this road before and its clear blizzard wont learn from it because criticisms are too much "negativity in the dojo".

[Wangming]

You pointed out the real core problem here. The end game has been the same for years now.

SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0. It is an expansion with the same endgame with different cosmetics.

I believe Blizzard tried to make Torghast a new form of end game. But it failed miserably.

The problem that is it mandatory. Nobody likes a mandatory endgame grind. Keep going back to the same place over and over and over again. And gain stuff that will be completely irrelevant and useless come 10.0

[Frozenbro]

People judge stuff so fast lmao, Shadowlands is by far the expansion with the best foundation and starting point since Wotlk, color me surprised if as patches go on it doesnt become one of the best, just remember the expansions you are fond of, remove your rose tinted glasses and realize how bad the first patch iterations were of those "amazing expansions" of the past, oh now you see that Shadowlands can be great, see? it wasnt hard.

[Venziir]

6.5 I'd say. Some where between "okay" and "good".

[ippollite]

Not necessarily bad. Just divisive.

I don't like it, why? Because my gameplay loop was gutted, and what they put in its place feels so... systematised (by which i mean insert input a-->corresponding output). It feels very soulless and empty as an 'experience'. But perhaps it needed to be done. Ive always sat on the fence whether wow should be a game for all players or a game that builds exclusively on its strengths (particularly given the diffusion and options available to mmo players right now). I mean, it makes sense. This isnt the powerhouse game it once was, and it doesnt really carry the immersion and exploration of say, eso, nor the story and atmosphere/systems of ff14. It lacks the frenetic pace of destiny 2. It doesnt really have the socialising of runescape or possibly aoc, so why not carve out your niche in that broad market instead of trying to be everything for everyone? It feels like a rational decision (if it even was one).

Which i guess brings me to the divisiveness, because honestly, when you look at the catch up (even if you start at level 1), its astonishing how joined up it can potentially be. You do your 1-10 quest on the island, then a couple of levels mucking around sw/if, then its off to boralus/zandalar to be hand held through a story campaign (now with new MSQ icons so you dont get locked into a grind on side quest chains if you dont want), then its into the ON RAILS storyline, then the covenant system then renown from callings, pvp, torghast, dungeons (all the end game components aside raiding - which you can enter with lfr), then its mythic and the proper end game. Even faster, hit 50, ToF, pvp to 60, do initial covenant quests, get to 5 renown, then DUMP HONOR on a 184 set. Now blast through renown stuff for covenant set/world drops. Within 1 reset you can be mythic plus ready at 200ilvl (never mind begging for scraps at 170). Like, thats literally all those players have asked for since the birth of the meta system: "Just let us play the actual game and stop making us do trivial, grindy world stuff". So aside the obvious loot hiccups (drop numbers and the slight nerf to mythic plus loot comparative to pvp and mythic raid loot), they should be pretty happy with the game so long as theres a decent content cycle.

[justandulas]

Thread full of outright lies, subjective opinions, personal gripes, bad feedback and arguments made in bad faith by the usual posters, who couldn't w8 to get yet another thread to wank off each others regurgitated posts.

My personal favourite lie is about zones being small and ''brimmed'' with mobs and the FP thing, my god it's hillarious. SL zones are extremely easy to navigate and get around if you did 3 runs in each with some brain.

I gave it a effkin 8, since i can appreciate the effort gone into this expansion (not having a personal beef with the company helped with that), but by all means keep complaining.

Biggest gripe with SL, as with BfA are you people. This forum has long been a misery, but for my own sake, time to hit the door. No healthy discussion can be found here.

Whether you love or hate SL, the very fact you think the zones are easy to navigate around one another kinda dismisses you from the discussion as you are being disingenuous at best to make some kind of point

There’s never been an expac where the zones are more poorly designed. Even cata was easier to navigate imo

[LordVargK]

Better than BfA and Legion by a mile. Better than cata and WoD. Worse than MoP but not by much. Did not play the others.

- - - Updated - - -

Whether you love or hate SL, the very fact you think the zones are easy to navigate around one another kinda dismisses you from the discussion as you are being disingenuous at best to make some kind of point

There’s never been an expac where the zones are more poorly designed. Even cata was easier to navigate imo

Bastion and Ardenweald are very easy to navigate. Maldraxxus is normal, Revendreth is hard.
That's better than Legion, where only asuna was pleasant to navigate in. I think SL is relatively average in this regard.

[trapmaster]

Story doesn't interest me at all, Not very alt friendly catch up, and just doesn't feel rewarding enough, and pvp is beyond imbalanced. It just doesn't "Deliver" expectations but only disappointments. At least there are other game to play.

3/10

[Dazmalak]

Thread full of outright lies, subjective opinions, personal gripes, bad feedback and arguments made in bad faith by the usual posters, who couldn't w8 to get yet another thread to wank off each others regurgitated posts.

My personal favourite lie is about zones being small and ''brimmed'' with mobs and the FP thing, my god it's hillarious. SL zones are extremely easy to navigate and get around if you did 3 runs in each with some brain.

I gave it a effkin 8, since i can appreciate the effort gone into this expansion (not having a personal beef with the company helped with that), but by all means keep complaining.

Biggest gripe with SL, as with BfA are you people. This forum has long been a misery, but for my own sake, time to hit the door. No healthy discussion can be found here.

Would be nice if people like you quit WoW as well since Blizzard seems to be catering to your shit taste in gaming preferences.

[Lolites]

i wonder how many people enjoyed the content but are now done and bored so they gave it bad mark...

but rating from people is always kinda shit, once on metacritic ive seen review (cant recall what game it was if i will ill edit this) that literaly said "game was good, campaign was a bit too short, 1/10"

[Cosmic Janitor]

You pointed out the real core problem here. The end game has been the same for years now.

SL = BFA 2.0 = Legion 3.0. It is an expansion with the same endgame with different cosmetics.

I believe Blizzard tried to make Torghast a new form of end game. But it failed miserably.

The sad part is that it isn't just an upgraded version of Legion, because during Legion most of the problems were already fixed by the time the expansion was about to end, but instead of taking the parts that they have already fixed and try to improve in other areas Blizzard just kept the vague shape and tries to start all over again with all the individual parts. Legendary acquisition at the end of Legion was ideal, as was the option to have 2 so you can mix and match them to be usefull in different situations. Now in SL we have 1 and because it's such a pain to get another one most people use the one that is best for everything if possible and never even try others. At the end of BfA Blizzard added a nice gear progression with visions that was possible for people who only play the game solo (and with groups). Instead of taking that, Blizzard made torghast completely irrelevant other than to farm legendaries and a whopping 3 cosmetic items with twisting corridors. By the time Blizzard might have figured out torghast they will probably abandon it again, like with so many other gameplay systems. Same with the artefact and artefact power systems. I mean seriously, why do I need to put them into the damn covenant storage myself, when they already figured that out in BfA. Same with the table missions, they have been in a free fall since WoD and have been progressively gotten worse with each iteration.

In many ways BfA and SL are legion0.2 and legion0.3 respectively, because instead of taking something that they spend 1-2 years trying to improve they abandon it and start over with another rubbish endgame system that needs at least 2 years to become decent. Often they actually made the parts of legion that people recognize worse, with exceptions of course, but it's more miss than hit.

That aside, people coming here and hysterically shouting that we absolutely can't judge their precious expansion, have you guys considered (or bothered to read) that this is merely a momentary snapshot of people's opinion about the expansion? No one claims that this will be the final judgement, very much like most people probably didn't gave their final judgement in the original thread. This thread is just a nice contrast to initial impression people had, now that all the time gating is over we have full access to everything that was on offer.

[HateTrain]

People judge stuff so fast lmao, Shadowlands is by far the expansion with the best foundation and starting point since Wotlk, color me surprised if as patches go on it doesnt become one of the best, just remember the expansions you are fond of, remove your rose tinted glasses and realize how bad the first patch iterations were of those "amazing expansions" of the past, oh now you see that Shadowlands can be great, see? it wasnt hard.

Oh don't be so precious. The thread isn't "JUDGE THE ENTIRETY OF SHADOWLANDS RIGHT NOW". It's judge NOW vs when it started. Like every expansion before it, it can come back around.

[Littleraven]

It's "good". It's got some issues especially around the content but I still think it is better comparably to where we were at a similar time in BFA. I just hope the patches flesh somethings out because if not this can go down as the biggest waste of potential since WoD for me.

[jazen]

4 is my rating.

As a more casual player (family/work commitments) I've found SL to much less enjoyable than previous expansions. There is simply no way to be competitive without group activities. By competitive I mean-random bg's not being blown up by the ilvl 226's, similar things in the few lfg dungeons. I expect a disparity, but the difference is just so much greater than previously.

Rated pvp, high lvl M+'s, or H/M raiding are required, as no amount of time spent doing stuff outside this gets you quality gear, whereas previous expansions a slow and steady grind would at least reward decent gear. Now, no matter how much time is spent, you're currently stuck around 200 ilvl.

World boss drops are meh, covenant gear is meh, lfr gear is meh, non-rated pvp gear even fully upgraded is meh.

[Nerovar]

People judge stuff so fast lmao, Shadowlands is by far the expansion with the best foundation and starting point since Wotlk, color me surprised if as patches go on it doesnt become one of the best, just remember the expansions you are fond of, remove your rose tinted glasses and realize how bad the first patch iterations were of those "amazing expansions" of the past, oh now you see that Shadowlands can be great, see? it wasnt hard.

There'll probably be another poll at the end of the expansion. I just wanted to see how the opinion on it shifted over the course of a few months.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Stopped playing last week. 1/10

[Subrias]

I put 7-8 on both. I enjoy doing M+. I enjoy raiding. PVP was fun for a little bit and I havent been able to stomach that since my vanilla warlord grind. I am enjoying the lore so far, I just hope they dont kill it by trying to redeem Sylvannas. In terms of comparison, its by far the best expansion since cataclysm. Panda land had terrible instances and raids EXCEPT ToT. WoD was WoD, Legion wasn't too bad but the legendary thing really fucked me over as a class with an option that almost doubled your damage and i didn't get it for a very long time. And we all know how bfa turned out.

[Frozenbro]

People vote like this, mostly because they only play M+. I hate M+, feels pointless. I mean, why do i need more item level?....To solo Maw/Torghast?....More raids....meh.

PvP is also bad, i dont know why you like it...

Also, Who else hates those long flying paths from the Realms to Oribos?....I freaking hate it so much!!!.

You know people can regard your opinion as useless just like you did in your post by saying that you do no content and therefore your vote has no weight right, the coin has 2 sides.

[Echocho]

Horrible. If you don't do premade group content there is nothing to do in the game. Character progression stops after only a few weeks so if you're not a sweaty minmaxer you can just unsub which is exactly what most casuals did.

9.2 will probably be a direct response to this and give casuals something to do in the game.

As shitty as BfA was you always had a reason to log in every week as a casual.