where SL goes wrong to me (leaving out social issues)

[GreenJesus]

I really do HATE world quests in Shadowlands. They take for-frickin-ever.

I really, really, miss the whistle. Without flying it was worth a metric ton of QoL.

Anima gains are waaaaaaayyy too low. I still haven't maxed out my 9.0 covenant and I won't do it in the next couple of months either. I refuse to grind anima in awful WQs, and now that I maxed all the reps to exalted I'm not even doing callings anymore. That's a major part of the expansion I'm not experiencing. This should be have been tuned to finish before the player hits max reps everywhere. Seriously, anima rewards could be multiplied by 5 and that would be great. They're not just a bit under, they're WAAAY too low.

And finally, there's a ton of story locked behind covenants that most players will never experience, because the penalties and opportunity costs for switching are so high. I hear about Kael'thas, Kel'thuzad, Uther, etc, and I have no clue what the hell anyone is talking about. I watched the 9.1 cinematic and I have no clue who that dude in chains was who stared at Anduin. Sure I could read spoilers on Wowhead or whatever, but screw that. They should allow players to join all four covenants but pick one as primary for abilities/dailies/adventures/etc.

Also it feels like there are barely any variety in world quests. It always feels like its just the same few every single time.

[SoundOfGuns]

Um... what? 30 anima? What world quests are you doing, considering the minimum amount they give is 35 anima, which is one single rare anima item. Anima WQs usually give around 2-3 of those, which totals 70/105 anima. Then there are WQs that give 4, which is 140 anima.

But no WQ offers the green quality anima items, that give 5 anima.

Answering to you since you were the first too hook themselves into that one, ignoring the entire rest of the argument in their struggle to defend Shadowlands? Im obviously exeggerating because i can not be arsed, as evident by "or whatever". That does not change what little reward that is. And if all you guys can say to defend it is an "UHM ACTSHUALLY" you sort of miss the point. Nothing personal.

[Aphrel]

I really do HATE world quests in Shadowlands. They take for-frickin-ever.

I really, really, miss the whistle. Without flying it was worth a metric ton of QoL.

Anima gains are waaaaaaayyy too low. I still haven't maxed out my 9.0 covenant and I won't do it in the next couple of months either. I refuse to grind anima in awful WQs, and now that I maxed all the reps to exalted I'm not even doing callings anymore. That's a major part of the expansion I'm not experiencing. This should be have been tuned to finish before the player hits max reps everywhere. Seriously, anima rewards could be multiplied by 5 and that would be great. They're not just a bit under, they're WAAAY too low.

And finally, there's a ton of story locked behind covenants that most players will never experience, because the penalties and opportunity costs for switching are so high. I hear about Kael'thas, Kel'thuzad, Uther, etc, and I have no clue what the hell anyone is talking about. I watched the 9.1 cinematic and I have no clue who that dude in chains was who stared at Anduin. Sure I could read spoilers on Wowhead or whatever, but screw that. They should allow players to join all four covenants but pick one as primary for abilities/dailies/adventures/etc.

greetings fellow night fae!

But atleast we get to run around killing bugs!

But yeah, just like how blizz dropped the ball on bfa by not letting ally/horde experience half the content, now the dumb fucks have cut it in 4^^

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its amazing how they managed to make thorgast dead on arrival. The first iteration of it looked so much more fun.

[Ielenia]

Answering to you since you were the first too hook themselves into that one, ignoring the entire rest of the argument in their struggle to defend Shadowlands?

Except I'm not "defending Shadowlands", much less "struggling" to do so. I simply saw a factually wrong statement in your post and aimed to correct it.

Im obviously exeggerating because i can not be arsed,

So you're lying to try to make a point? Not just on the reward side of things, but the time it takes for said reward, too.

That does not change what little reward that is.

Kind of does, really, when you misrepresent not only how much anima you get in a world quest, but also how much time it takes to finish it.

And if all you guys can say to defend it is an "UHM ACTSHUALLY" you sort of miss the point.

Again, not trying to defend Shadowlands here. Just correcting false information. If you think Shadowlands is a bad expansion, surely you can make a decent point without distorting the truth?

[Golden]

I was in beta for Shadowlands and I remember thinking that there is very little to do outside of raiding, mythic+, and high-end PvP. Even doing things that traditionally were solo now required a pre-made. They even removed the scaling from random BGs. Basically, they were showing the casual playerbase the door.

Shadowlands released and sold record numbers. All the streamers were saying Shawdowlands was amazing. I thought Blizz must have made a good business decision...now I need to find a new game to play. Then a couple months passed and, to my surprise, there are complaints that Shadowlands is a ghost town. I guess the casual playerbase wasn't as worthless as the hardcores and Blizz had hoped.

[Deferionus]

Well, i disagree with that. xD

World quests force me into far more travel time across the zone (even across multiple zones depending on what i am doing) and take longer to complete. Daily quests tend to be contained to a hub that minimizes travel time.
Travel time = boredom. At least to me. The more time i spend traveling, the more time i have to think i am bored and question why i am playing the game.

Gotta be kidding me? They are still going to put the quest objectives where they want them. WQs literally just eliminate the need to travel to a hub just to pick up quests. And then you gotta consider quest log limitations if you have any quest chains you are doing. Daily quests are inferior in every aspect imaginable.

[Lane]

This. I still remember when I was OMGSOHAPPY because I had unlocked Nightborne. I headed to the character creation screen... and boy was I disappointed.

In that case, they could start by removing all the fluff like covenants, soulbinds, anima, Torghast, etc. that serve absolutely no purpose gameplay-wise, other giving you more things to grind.

Not only character creation options, but the Nightborne NPC armor is better looking than the heritage set, IMO. Plus, I would've liked to have had some of the regular citizen sets too. I feel the same way about Revendreth now, even though I like their covenant set armor I would love to have some of the gothic NPC sets for transmog.

I've been wanting them to remove AP since Legion and mission tables since WoD. The devs talk about having expansion specific systems they don't carry forward yet continue to reuse the worst parts of them while getting rid of the best. Torghast is a small step in the right direction but, just like their version of player housing (garrisons), the devs don't quite seem to get it. Rift and Wildstar had 1-3 player challenge dungeons that were a lot of fun, Blizzard is several years late to this party and we probably wouldn't have Torghast at all were it not for the success of mage tower.

WoW's also the only MMO I play that doesn't have fast travel (like waypoints) and is probably the one most in need of them, but for whatever reason they have this bizarre notion that makes the world feel smaller when I haven't found that to be the case. I've never seen anyone complain about Elder Scrolls games feeling small.

The funny thing is, from what I've read about WQs they seem to have taken a page from Wildstar because the filling the bar, multi-stage formula was how a lot of their questing worked and people hated it. So maybe WoW still does steal stuff, just the wrong stuff. :P I've lost track of all the things I wish they'd take from other games, many that seem standardized throughout more modern MMOs at this point. If it weren't due to years of attachment, familiarity, and the fact that I can't get my spouse to play anything else, I'd probably completely drop WoW for ESO.

[Swnem]

Gotta be kidding me? They are still going to put the quest objectives where they want them. WQs literally just eliminate the need to travel to a hub just to pick up quests. And then you gotta consider quest log limitations if you have any quest chains you are doing. Daily quests are inferior in every aspect imaginable.

Why am i kidding? I said it right there. Daily quests are usually contained to smaller areas.
You travel way more with world quests, they are spread across the whole zone.

Well designed, daily hubs are great fun. As you do them, you learn to optimise your route and the final turn in is very satisfying.

Why are you complaining about a quest log? You can untrack old quests. No one is saying you must do 10 quests daily or whatever you are imagining. 3, just like the WQ callings.
Though, dailies are more easily expanded without increasing travel time massively.

For example, FFxiv has the beast tribe dailies in SB. The ones in Il Mheg are amazing. You complete all 3 quests in like 5 minutes.
SWTOR has a different takes which i like. I can think of the Czerka hub. Theres like 5 of them in a contained area. You descend the facility as you kill and click stuff on the way and end in a solo instance mini-boss.
Well designed dailies can tell a story. WQ's are disjointed, slow and have long travel time between them. They are a chore and difficult to optimise a route for cause they aren't always up.

I don't know what you think of when we are talking about dailies, but it seems to be something different.
In WoW i can think of Skettis and the Netherwing as good hubs that told a story and unlocked cool rewards.
Unfortunely, WoW hasn't done good quest hubs in years.

But, make no mistake. Travel time is way worse for WQ's. I wont accept a challenge on that cause it's just not true.

[SoundOfGuns]

"Words"

You... do realize you are proving the point i made about you, right? Don't be so "willing" to catch one for Blizzard. Besides that i made two other points, this one is not less valid. It doesn't matter if its 35 or 70 or 140 Anima. Its still entirely useless to any kind of effort beyond adding artificial time wasters and grind to the horribly designed covenant stuff, where they just once again could not be arsed to listen to just a single voice in the entire pool that was literally everyone else in and around this community when they still could have fixed it. And i am aware this might be a reaction to the annoyance that were Artifactpower and Azeritefragments; Being 100% required for proper progression and so on, but this is not the way to fix that, because this is nothing to be fixed. In my eyes this is something to remove entirely. I also did not call Shadowlands bad, but the world quest system, the quests themselves and the reward curve absolutely are wack right now.

Its fine holding people accountable for their statements, but you got to learn where that kind of zealously is appropriate and where it makes you look pedantic. If you have been here since 10 years you should be old enough for that, and you don't seem stupid either. But if you like being skinnerboxed and do another 2 years of Animaritefragment-farming be my guest, tho i have to ask you to please keep your ass out of my notifications if you want to argue with me because i wrote "5x6" and not "2x35" or "4x35" in a snarky remark at 4AM in a community mmo board.

[Zorachus]

Besides Raiding and M+ there's literally nothing left to do in Shadowlands.

I don't know how Blizzard made this expansion so boring and feeling lifeless and seems like a generic release made by the interns.

World Quests are absolute dog shit and just a major waste of time. 35 Anima LOL or crap i185 or so worthless gear. I don't expect Raid type hear drops but at least something a little higher for alts.

Torghast blows, just so repetitive and boring, and long. With no rewards.

M+ I will admit is still pretty cool and good. I run those still. But eventually I will get burned out running these same dungeons a hundred times each.

Raids, no thanks that ship has sailed for me. I don't have 4 hours to blow just sitting at my computer whacking away at some video games monsters for little to no reward. Hard pass.

The worst is how they designed Shadowlands new areas. 4 separate islands. Ugh. Always needing to fly through Oribis to get between zones. Double ugh. No flight whistle. Triple ugh. Getting from one zone to the next is a time sink and just takes way too long.

I don't see how patch 9.1 fixes any of this? I'm hoping 10.0 brings back the fun and the next expansion goes back to one big new continent all connected zones

[Schizoide]

I mean, that's similar to previous expansions.

Back then once you maxed out your reps, there was no particular reason to do WQs anymore other than AP, and removing the AP grind is an unambiguously good change. Once you cap your itemlvl and rep, you can skip WQs.

Torghast sucks, but Island Adventures sucked more, because the AP grind kept us doing them waaaay past the point where we stopped having fun. Once you've got your legendaries done you can skip Torghast.

[Stardrift]

Let alone in the ingame cinematic that are so cringe that you just cancel them. Blizz still cant do ingame stuff. The wooden animation from 1998 when kel thuzad is dragged back took 2 sec before he got pulled, while we are just waiting in the back.

Its all kinda... not realy cool.

The dialogue certainly doesn't help. "SYLVANAAAAAAAAAAS!!!11!1"

It's just really, really bad. Like an American anime targeting 14 year old boys. Cheesy one liners, disposition upon disposition upon disposition, cringy ill-timed Disney-Marvel-esque quips, and... Yea that's it. That's all the dialogue has been lol. There's very rarely anything of substance.

I don't mind rough animations. Yes they're fucking ugly, but if they can have some decent story packed in? It makes it a little bearable. But fuck, with some Star Wars episode 8 type dialogue thrown in? I just hit escape and yes.

[Ielenia]

You... do realize you are proving the point i made about you, right?

No, it doesn't. Because you're mistaking me correcting something you said wrong is not me wanting to defend Shadowlands. Making hyperboles so extremes that they end up not representing the game does is not a good argument to make. Simple as that.

But if you want me to play your game, I suppose I could say that you're so desperate to hate on WoW that you have to make up lies about it and accuse everyone who corrects you of "shills" and "white knight".

But that's not what you're doing, is it?

[Helander]

.
3. badge bookkeeping 1000% sucks compared to WF/TF. Another step backwards.

Because of this point, everything you stated is invalid.

[Spike`]

SL make me miss the Turtle WQs and i hated them

so take that what i feel about SL

[NotTrolling]

How do people keep saying the dungeons are amazing? There is literally 2 dungeons that aren't just instanced versions of the zones. Recent expansions it seems blizzard puts less and less effort into designing interesting, unique dungeons that aren't a complete copy/paste job. It's like they spend all their development on mythic+ and leave any other difficulty to rot.

[Metrox]

WQ are an annoyance partially because WoW is now completely instanced in its travel. We have to port to Oribos and then port to the other map. It figures to be almost 4 minutes every time I want to change a zone. I can't just fly over a mountain to the next map....I have to go through Oribos every time. Sometimes it's actually faster to use the Dalaran hearthstone and just go through Orgrimmar portal room and save the travel time to Oribos. It's stupidly time consuming.

The WQ are made up of parts....go here....collect this.....summon this....now go kill this somewhere else. Half of the points aren't visible on your minimap or large map. I constantly look up quests on Wowhead for coords to show me where the next part is at. If you read the comments on Wowhead for a lot of quests, I am not the only person unhappy with the lack of map markings. I played this game in Vanilla and I am not ready to return to quests being a puzzle.

Anima amounts are so low. Try catching alts up and anima amounts will be a problem. From what I have read, Blizzard upped anima gains in raids so they don't have to do anything else, but that doesn't help a world content person at all.

SL is still a main only expansion just like a lot of the others. When Blizzard thinks of "alts" they think of players with maybe 2 alts. Try 1 of each class......and you will find just how alt unfriendly SL really is as an expansion. Gear locked at 200 level without group content..... no soloing Legion raids until at least patch 9.2....WQ dropping so little anima that transmog from covenents is really limited with current costs. Bugs that screw up the stangest things since launch (like no rares spawning in Molten Front on one of my servers so I can't tame Deth'tilac). Blizzards response to me about bugs is that mine are far down the list of ones they are working on.....lol. Great expansion!

[Soon-TM]

Because of this point, everything you stated is invalid.

Not really. OP's other points can still be valid regardless of your opinion about that particular one. You didn't even bother to discuss why is that point invalid.

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I don't mind rough animations. Yes they're fucking ugly, but if they can have some decent story packed in? It makes it a little bearable. But fuck, with some Star Wars episode 8 type dialogue thrown in? I just hit escape and yes.

Argh, right on spot. I'm not a fan of HD cinematics (although they can be cool), so I wouldn't mind all these ugly machinima if the story was actually interesting :/

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Honestly I don't think SL went wrong. It just is taking to long. A lot of these m+ issues, raid issues, pvp issues are always around. Its just when a new patch comes out every 3-4 months people aren't sitting around with their heads knocking on the bottom of their skill cap for long enough for it to matter. Because the new thing comes out, the item level bump goes out, and people just go on doing things on their own level of content for a while until things start to itch and a patch drops again sometime shortly afterwards. Since the first patch is going to be roughly (give or take) 6 months in that is occurring a lot right now.

[Baine]

The next world quest I do will be the first I’ve done in months, but... I’ve never understood world quests. Why are they fun?

As someone who only do world quests (and covenant stuff), I don't do them because they are that much fun. I do them because I can kill stuff with my characters. And because of the gold reward from the daily calling.