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

[Frozenbro]

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

I agree that the current valor system needs more tuning, but saying its worse than WF/TF is hilarious, titanforging was trash and made content useless, hope its gone forever.

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I mean TF WAS super nice if you werent a Mythic raider where that gear actually matter to ensure your spot. Which was not the case for most people.

This was never the reason, it was because it put even more restrictions on loot trading, with master loot not existing on top of that, it was a trash experience for every decent guild out there, "sorry, cant trade this bis trinket, it titanforged tehe"

[Radaney]

Here's where Shadowlands went wrong;

They spent a large majority of the expansion creating and balancing a soulbind and conduit system as a major feature when the depth of player interaction with this system is the player clicking a singular button on a user interface once every month or so. How can you even call this a feature? You don't even see it for 99.9% of your playtime.

What a fucking waste of time.

They should try actually making new features you even interact with.

[Glorious Leader]

isn't that what they were going for though? in Legion and BfA you felt obligated to do every single world quest; because doing that would not only give you shitloads of AP, which boosted your performance, or you would get the Paragon chest quicker which gave you more AP. Now it's more relaxed; you literally don't have to do any world quests. The Calling system I think favours non world quests too - the only ones that require world quests are the "complete 3 with your trainee in X zone"

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you don't get 6x5 anima for anything outside of adventures, and that is boosted to 10-12x5 as you level up. world quests give between 35 and 140 anima. Personally, I only do the 105-140 anima and I get a steady amount a week - this week so far will be 6.5k

Thats exactly what they were going for and they succeeded and it was an awful idea. Making the game less rewarding for other people because some people feel put out is brain dead stupid on basically every level.

[LauraHydra1]

Yeah, pretty much. WQs were fine in Legion and BfA. Repetitive after a while, of course, because there is only a finite number of them, but at least in Legion / BfA, what you saw was mostly what you got. If it was a multi-stage quest, it would usually list the stages from the beginning. The flightmasters whistle was a massive help as well before I got flying.
And now...a single WQ can take 20 minutes, it doesn't tell you how many more stages there are, so something that looked easy and chill turns into a slog and it just feels like getting tricked. I miss the ones that were just "Go there and kill this guy". Having to walk everywhere is annoying. The new zones are annoying to navigate, especially Revendreth with those stupid elevators.
And to make it worse, the rewards are just not worth it, especially the amounts of anima.

I have a feeling the covenant locking will be removed at some point. As soon as they start messing with the balancing of the covenant abilities, people will switch for min-maxing and then it'll be hard to justify why switching should take so long.

The raid...yeah. Just a lot of grey and red rooms. More variety would be nice, a mix of outdoor and indoor, some nice scenery. I get that a castle built by one faction that was apparently ruled by a single person for practically forever would look quite uniform, but still.

Torghast...yeah, it's boring. Again, it all looks the same, and takes ages to do, and you can't really take breaks. There's only a handful of different mob types, and you just fight the same enemies over and over. The additional powers can be pretty fun, but they're so random that whether a run goes well or not can be entirely determined by RNG, and that just isn't fun.

The Maw isn't an enjoyable zone to be in, even on shamans and druids with enhanced mobility. It's ugly and depressing. There are too many enemies for a zone where avoiding encounters is necessary to avoid drawing the jailers eye. Group finder seems to be bugged, every time I've been in a group with people I ended up not being able to see them. Do I want to know what is up with Venari? Yes. Can I read up on her on wikis? Also yes. So I don't have to farm the reputation, really.

I get tht COVID messed up the development of the expansion and that features probably had to be cut. But right now, the game just isn't fun to play.

[Electric Lighter]

After battle for azeroths failed systems they decided what shadowlands really needed was new systems...

So the cycle continues. Kill of AP, dust, and all other things beyond item progression and you will see life anew.

(Also revert the moronic gear drop nerfs)

[Schizoide]

I for one would really like the devs to make 2 very simple changes right now, not waiting for 9.1. Hotfix them.

1) Multiply all anima rewards by 5. Increase weekly quest requirements accordingly so they aren't trivial.
2) Allow the flight whistle to work in SL zones.

These two simple changes would really help a lot.

[ro9ue]

The most memorable thing about Shadowlands was doing Exile's Reach on a fresh character and also how much better the leveling feels now with the squish. I think if I didn't already have a zillion characters I'd probably still be playing alts. 50-60+ Shadowlands experience had some cool bits but not enough to keep me around.

[Swnem]

Of course the in-game community is dead and its a massive problem and torghast is bad and the maw zone is terrible. Let's set those aside. Other issues to me.

1. World Quests got completely destroyed. People whined about them were they were perfectly fine and now they are ruined.
2. Lots of mogs but almost ALL of them are ugly which kills the desire to collect them. I think every single mog set locked behind covenant rep is ugly.
3. badge bookkeeping 1000% sucks compared to WF/TF. Another step backwards.
4. raid settings are getting extremely repetitive with almost every single one of them in dark, dank caves or antiseptic buildings. We need more varied raid settings. On a beach, on a snow capped mountain or snowy woods, forests, etc.
5. almost all of the characters in SL are constipated and wooden. I don't care about the first ones. I don't care about Zovaal. They spew out these bland, boring slow-witted diatribes that put me to sleep. Its a complete disaster. They are as horribly written and acted like characters from the Star Wars prequels. Characters like Baine, Anduin, the Winter Queen, Zovaal, the Primus all fit right in with Qui-Gon, Anakin, Padme, etc. Even Sire Denathrius is more about just spewing boring diatribes out his mouth than anything (I don't know why they praise him).
6. Looks like they will throw away KelThuzad as a minor miniboss instead of actually doing something with the buildup he's had over the years. Another waste. That's a billboard advertisement to not get invested into the new characters in SL.

I couldn't disagree more. TF/WF is pure cancer and undermines achievements. I much prefer the current deterministic rewards. Badges are good.

World quests have always been bad. But, you could do the short ones to kill one mob. They removed those and now we only got the boring ones.

I think Kel'thuzad is a tiny thing to complain about. But, the whole story of this expansion is under cooked. But, you know... this is not news. WoW's story had always been kind of below par compared to other more story driven mmo's.

[Deferionus]

I couldn't disagree more. TF/WF is pure cancer and undermines achievements. I much prefer the current deterministic rewards. Badges are good.

World quests have always been bad. But, you could do the short ones to kill one mob. They removed those and now we only got the boring ones.

I think Kel'thuzad is a tiny thing to complain about. But, the whole story of this expansion is under cooked. But, you know... this is not news. WoW's story had always been kind of below par compared to other more story driven mmo's.

Gotta disagree about WQs. Compared to daily quests WQs are a God send. I don't have to needlessly go to a hub and collect them and then go back to turn in. I just go do the objectives and it takes care of itself.

[Gaidax]

I think these longer WQs are unnecessarily annoying indeed. That said - Anima is a completely optional cosmetics only thing, so I simply don't care. It's effectively War Resources and it's already meaningless and will become as plentiful as War Resources were as patches progress.

Ultimately passive Anima gains from table and shit you do will be enough to unlock everything you see over the course of expansion.

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Other than that, I also think it would be nice to have some variance in raids and not another grim dark color coded stuff. I would really love them to take a "zebra" approach to tiers - one brightly colored raid tier for one "evil dark dead doom" colored raid.

Last time there was decent breath of fresh air was Dazar'Alor. I'd like to see another open raid like that, but seems like next raid is basically a refurbished Torghast and I don't see how raid after that will be anything but another dark citadel of evil darkness that darkens everything.

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As for characters and villains, I'm actually ok with them. Yeah, Jailer is a some generic random nobody with mad plan to make things as he sees fit they just popped out of their behinds, with these forced connections of HE WAS BEHIND IT ALL ALONG in hopes of making him a bit more than a bland expansion prop he is.

But supporting characters are pretty good, IMO. Denathrius IS good, he has great voice acting and he also has this unresolved agenda and mystery of lineage behind him. He will be back 100%, with his Dreadlord pals and all. Kyrian and NF are good in their own, while Necrolords imo are the weakest link - remind me of a filler episodes of Naruto or shit like that.

So I'd say mixed bag here, there are good ones and there are bad ones, like every expansion really.

[Swnem]

Gotta disagree about WQs. Compared to daily quests WQs are a God send. I don't have to needlessly go to a hub and collect them and then go back to turn in. I just go do the objectives and it takes care of itself.

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.

[Zorachus]

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.

World Quests feel like a chore now, clocking into a factory job. Gotta get to work, and start killing 50 local creatures to fill up the blue bar, so I can get 35 Anima and part of the overall questing.

It takes forever now to do WQ's, they are so boring, and tedious, and just zero fun. And on top of a that, give absolute shit rewards. I miss Legion WQ's and Emmiseries.

And no Flight Whistle, holy cow Blizz what were you thinking? It's brutal to get around Shadowlands.

And the disconnected SL zones all being separate islands, and being forced to always have to go through Oribos first before you can fly to the next zone. WTF? Who thought that'd be fun and a great idea during development? It takes FOREVER to travel from one zone to the next, it really pisses me off how they designed it with each zone being separated, such a bad idea.

Thing is, I do love WoW, been playing since launch like many of you. But Shadowlands just feels bland and boring, sort of like a generic filler expansion. I didn't care for BfA much either, but I never felt this bored and not wanting to play, like I am now in SL.

[Unholyground]

The fact they think their game is still worth $21 CAD a month is what baffles me. There is just no value there anymore based on the content provided alone. They expect us to pay more now than ever to play a single game that is essentially a second job for many to stay relevant to the content. Activision-Blizzard should grant access to all the battle.net titles for that fee and it would actually be closer to a good value. I quit playing back in January and haven't looked back, played WoW since 2005.

[John Croquette]

Count me as another person who hates the current WQ system. I don't dislike the idea of accumulating anima for cosmetics either. I just can't find any motivation to do any of those quests, after I tried a few of them for the first time. Needlessly long and drawn out, and it gets even more annoying to do if more people are around.

The Legion and BFA "kill this rare monster" or "do this small mini-game" were like a nice little thing you can every day. Either of those made me not mind having a over crowded WQ area. There were other quests too that had more busy work you can do, but they existed along with the Rares/Elite WQ and minigames. So you had options, but if you just wanted to do a bit a day, you could breeze by some simple WQs.

[Soon-TM]

@John Croquette it also doesn't help that the # of WQs has gone significantly down since the days of Legion. I remember reading somewhere (I think it was Wowhead) that Stormheim alone had almost as many WQs as all 4 SL zones put together.

[cparle87]

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?

They're literally dailies without the time wasting of having to go to point A which might be on the other side of the zone, manually pick it up, fly to where it needs to be done, then return to point A to turn them in. They're better than dailies, which we've had since BC, in every way.

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@John Croquette it also doesn't help that the # of WQs has gone significantly down since the days of Legion. I remember reading somewhere (I think it was Wowhead) that Stormheim alone had almost as many WQs as all 4 SL zones put together.

People complained there were too many, Blizzard listened. Now people complain there's not enough. Can't win.

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World Quests feel like a chore now, clocking into a factory job. Gotta get to work, and start killing 50 local creatures to fill up the blue bar, so I can get 35 Anima and part of the overall questing.

It takes forever now to do WQ's, they are so boring, and tedious, and just zero fun. And on top of a that, give absolute shit rewards. I miss Legion WQ's and Emmiseries.

Then... don't do them? Forcing yourself to do content you hate for cosmetics you don't care about makes no sense. The only thing you really need to do is 1k per week for your renown, and that can be done with the WB, the 2 Oribos dungeon quests, and a few random dungeons.

[Soon-TM]

People complained there were too many, Blizzard listened. Now people complain there's not enough. Can't win.

LMAO. I really don't remember anyone complaining about the amount of WQs in Legion. It would have been ridiculous to do that rofl, more variety is always better.

But you had to appear in your polished, shiny combat regalia in order to defend Blizzard's good name, tarnished by all those miscreants who dare criticise them. Keep up the good fight

[Zorachus]

LMAO. I really don't remember anyone complaining about the amount of WQs in Legion. It would have been ridiculous to do that rofl, more variety is always better.

But you had to appear in your polished, shiny combat regalia in order to defend Blizzard's good name, tarnished by all those miscreants who dare criticise them. Keep up the good fight

Exactly. I loved Legion World Quests, and don't recall anyone saying there's too many of them. Plus they were more fun and never felt like a chore or too time consuming.

[schwarzkopf]

Leaving out social issues - Shadowlands has nothing wrong with it.

[Soon-TM]

Dailies are bad too. Never understood the point of them. I started playing in late wrath, didn't do any dailies, didn't do any dailies in Cata (just wore tabards), then Mists first patch I was like wtf is this daily shit, then by SOO they were mostly gone and went away through WoD. Suddenly in Legion they were everywhere.

To me, dailies are a necessary (to an extent) evil. In that regard, WQs are more convenient, the only curious thing about them is that they were quick and new in Legion, in BfA they weren't new anymore, but they were still quick... And now in SL, they are neither new nor quick.